Latin America Daily Briefing
Regional Relations
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s State Department picks herald a focus on Latin America that will shift the past 30 years of “benign neglect,” writes Brian Winter in Foreign Affairs. Whether this focus — driven by concerns over migration, drug trafficking and the geopolitical competition with China — is negative or positive depends: Trump will be emboldened to pressure Latin American government’s to achieve his goals, but a focus on edging out Chinese influence in the region could benefit regional governments.
WOLA’s Maureen Meyer says the incoming Trump administration’s transactional approach to the region, and focus on migration and drug trafficking is not particularly new. But “some of his more extreme proposals, such as military intervention in Mexico to address drug trafficking, have gained more traction within the Republican party. We can anticipate a strong law enforcement and military response to curb the production and trafficking of illicit drugs from the region.” (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung)
Haiti
The massacre of over 180 elderly people in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Wharf Jérémie, “fueled by accusations of witchcraft, exposes the brutality of gangs, the historical persecution of voodoo and the desperation of a people caught between violence and state neglect,” reports El País. (See yesterday’s post.)
Colombia
More than 20 Colombians were killed by suicide drones in the Darfur region in Sudan, apparently they were a portion of the approximately 300 mercenaries who have been recruited to fight side by side with the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces, reports El País.
People creating adult content in Colombian webcam studios are subject to a wide range of labor rights abuses and sexual exploitation, according to a new Human Rights Watch report. “US and EU-based webcam platforms, part of a billion-dollar industry, rake in millions broadcasting adult content from webcam studios like Colombia’s, but the platforms need to address their role in the studios' human rights abuses.” (See also El País.)
Migration
Six Guatemalans were arrested in Guatemala and in Texas yesterday on human smuggling charges linked to a 2021 semi-trailer truck crash in Mexico that killed more than 50 people, reports the Associated Press.
Mexico
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said much of the money gained by eliminating independent oversight and regulatory agencies will finance a pay raise for soldiers’ pay. (Associated Press)
A lawsuit by an Indigenous Mayan organization in Mexico “seeks personhood status for the Ring of Cenotes, made up of hundreds of subterranean lakes that surround the northwest of the Yucatan peninsula in a semicircle, and provide the main source of freshwater in the region,” reports the Associated Press.
Brazil
Black people are disproportionately killed by Brazilian police, a situation that has normalized such deaths and contributes to the relative lack of outcry over an egregious 2022 case of police violence, reports the Guardian.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is in intensive care recovering from surgery to remove a bleed on his brain connected to a fall in October, reports the Financial Times. (See also Guardian, Reuters)
Argentina
Argentina’s anarcho-libertarian President Javier Milei completed his first year in office, defying pessimistic expectations that his government would founder in the country’s deep economic crisis. “It wasn’t a given that he could govern Argentina when he took office,” analyst Marcelo J. García told the Associated Press. “He was Mr. Nobody.” “
“Yet Milei has used executive powers to get around his lack of a majority in Congress, enacting hundreds of deregulation measures and putting the opposition on the back foot,” reports the Financial Times. He’s implemented severe austerity measures “without setting off widespread protests threatened by his opponents.” But reduced inflation and the budget surplus come at a steep cost: a brutal recession and soaring poverty rates.
“These past 12 months have seen a period of power-building, although it is still unclear whether this is a temporary period of control or the beginning of a new stage of political hegemony for the far right,” reports El País.
Cenital has a special analyzing Milei’s first year, ranging from politics to soccer. In a piece on the Milei administration’s foreign policy, Martín Schapiro notes that the libertarian’s combative (non)diplomacy has worked so far, but could backfire in the future.
According to a September poll by Zuban Córdoba, 65.7 percent of Argentines believe that "hate and intolerance are on the rise" since Milei took office, reports AFP, noting the president’s penchant for “using inflammatory rhetoric that has poisoned the political discourse.”
Among the promises Milei has not kept: dollarizing the economy and getting rid of the Central Bank, notes the Buenos Aires Times.