LADB - News Briefs

April 17, 2025

Venezuela

• Venezuela will hold regional and legislative elections next month. After a remarkable show of unity during last year’s presidential elections, the political opposition to Nicolás Maduro has again fractured into infighting factions, writes Tony Frangie Mawad in Americas Quarterly.

Regional Relations

• “A historic resolution at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in mid-March may be the beginning of a major shift in international drug controls. Or, given the US withdrawal from the world stage, it may mark the beginning of the end of the multilateral drug regime,” writes Steven Dudley in InSight Crime.

• Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum voiced doubts over the legitimacy of Daniel Noboa’s reelection on Sunday in Ecuador, joining Colombian President Gustavo Petro who said he would not recognize the victory yet. Mexico and Ecuador have a tense diplomatic relationship after Noboa raided Mexico’s Quito embassy last year. (Infobae)

Brazil

• The world’s largest meat company, JBS, looks set to break its Amazon rainforest protection promises again, according to frontline workers cited by the Guardian.

• The Guardian reports on how “cattle laundering” permits cattle from illegal or deforestation-linked farms to be mixed into Brazil’s supply chain. “Global consumers of Brazilian beef cannot know for sure whether their burgers and steaks caused destruction of the rainforest until there is a way to track the entire supply chain.”

• As the COP30 in Brazil approaches — the first climate summit in the Amazon — “a gulf is opening between what the area’s farming lobby wants, and what the world needs,” write Jonathan Watts, Naira Hofmeister and Daniel Camargos in the Guardian. “The first ranchers here were once told they were heroes for opening new economic frontiers. But the climate crisis has dealt a triple blow to their reputation and their livelihoods: not only has it become harder to feed and water their livestock, they now face criticism for wrecking a biodiverse pillar of the global environment while also bearing the brunt of conflicting demands from multinational food corporations to provide food that is both economically cheap and ecologically ethical.”

• Heavy rare earths mines in Brazil could diversify a market dominated by China — except that China is the only place with the technical capacity to process and separate them, reports the New York Times.

Colombia

• Illegally diverted rivers, seawater and poorly managed building projects have polluted the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta in Colombia. But the Unesco site has a vital role to play in fighting climate change, reports the Guardian.

Panama

• In Panama, “the United States should move forward carefully but strategically to avoid damaging pro-American President José Raúl Mulino’s standing domestically, where the political opposition is keen to ensure these issues have a cost for Mulino and which require him to deploy his shrinking political capital to navigate effectively,” writes Ryan Berg in an analysis for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Deportations

• U.S. federal judge James E. Boasberg threatened to open a high-stakes contempt investigation into whether the Trump administration had violated an order he issued last month directing officials to stop planes of Venezuelan migrants from being sent to El Salvador, reports the New York Times. (See also the Guardian.)

• U.S. senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, travelled to El Salvador yesterday, but failed to secure a meeting with Kilmar Abrego García, who is imprisoned in a maximum security prison there after being mistakenly deported by the Trump administration. (New York Times, Guardian, Reuters)

El Salvador

• Nayib Bukele’s comments that he cannot free Abrego García from prison were widely taken as snark — but what if they are a sign of profound presidential weakness, writes James Bosworth in a contrarian analysis at Latin America Risk Report. “It would signal that Bukele’s authoritarian act is all an illusion to cover up the fact that he is losing to or controlled by the gangs. Perhaps we should be worried about Bukele being far weaker than he appears.”

Cuba

• The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed alarm at the arrest and prolonged pre-trail detention of Cuban freelance reporters Yadiel Hernández and José Gabriel Barrenechea, who both write for the online newspaper 14ymedio, and called on Cuban authorities to release them immediately.

Haiti

• Haiti’s security forces are getting an additional $33.46 million this year as they face escalating attacks from armed gangs. But the “war budget” is taking funds from other priorities, such as the cleaning of canals in flood-prone communities and agriculture investments, notes the Miami Herald.

• Two-hundred years after France forced Haiti to pay a ransom for its own independence, “demand has grown for greater recognition of what France’s “independence debt” did to Haiti’s development. It also comes amid a debate about reparations, and whether there should be financial restitution for the debt,” reports the Miami Herald.

Critter Corner

• Since the coronavirus pandemic, capybaras, known locally as carpinchos, have proliferated in Nordelta, a high-end, 45,000-strong gated community outside Buenos Aires, reports the New York Times. (I reiterate once more, the Latin America Daily Briefing is Team Carpincho all the way.)