Latin America Daily Briefing
(Dec. 12, 2024)
Venezuela
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested to lawmakers that the Biden administration could revoke Chevron Corp.’s license to produce oil in Venezuela, as the outgoing government seeks to increase pressure on President Nicolás Maduro, reports Bloomberg.
Even as there are rumors that some political detainees will be freed, Venezuela’s government continues detaining people associated with the opposition — Primero Justicia politician Jesús Armas was arrested on Tuesday and forced into an unmarked vehicle, reports El País. (Human Rights Watch denounced the disappearance of Sofía María Sahagún.)
Venezuelan authorities released photos of Rocío San Miguel, a human rights activist detained last February, for the first time. She has been detained in El Helicoide, a prison known for horrific conditions and torture of political prisoners. (El País)
Argentina's government accused its Venezuelan counterpart of continually harassing six members of the political opposition who have been sheltering for months in the Argentine diplomatic compound in Caracas, reports the Associated Press.
Migration
Some Venezuelan migrants at Mexico’s southern border are asking U.S. president-elect Donald Trump to help resolve their country’s political crisis, a move they say would stem migration. (EFE)
“Push factors for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan migration persist. The situations in these countries are not only not getting better, they are arguably getting worse,” notes Jordi Amaral in a post on migration trends to watch out for in 2025. “Migration continues to be among the most salient and controversial topics across the Americas, dominating news coverage and influencing political messaging and policy across the hemisphere.” (Americas Migration Brief)
Nicaragua
Nearly 80 people have been detained for political reasons in Nicaragua this year — all of whom are disappeared, marking a shift in country’s repressive strategy, according to Unidad de Defensa Jurídica, a Nicaraguan rights group. (El País)
Mexico
Violence is slowing in Mexico’s Sinaloa state, after three months of war between rival factions of the Sinaloa cartel, which have left more than a thousand dead or disappeared, and a city in a unique kind of humanitarian crisis, reports the Guardian.
Brazil
Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will undergo a new medical procedure today in order to prevent further bleeding in his brain. (Reuters) He was operated on earlier this week to contain a brain bleed related to a fall in October. (Guardian, see Tuesday’s briefs.)
El Salvador
New laws passed in November by El Salvador’s legislature contain sweeping provisions that threaten media freedom and privacy rights, according to Human Rights Watch.
Colombia
Colombian lawmakers refused to back a government-promoted bill that sought to increase taxes on wealthy individuals, gambling platforms and carbon emissions — aimed at reining in the fiscal deficit without cutting social programs. The decision could force the Petro administration to implement painful spending cuts, reports Bloomberg.
Regional Relations
Trump’s nominee for the U.S. embassy in Mexico is Ronald Johnson, a former military and CIA officer who served as the Trump administration’s ambassador to El Salvador and became Nayib Bukele’s personal friend, according to El País.
Argentina
Juan Gabriel Tokatlian analyzes how Argentina’s diplomacy over the past 40 years reflects the country’s redemocratization — with a multilateral approach and leadership on human rights. “All governments had their preferences, emphases and nuances, but in essence, the double identity of being a southern part of the West and of the Global South was deployed without costs,” he writes in Clarín. But the Milei administration has attempted “comprehensive rethinking of foreign policy as a mirror of its efforts to completely reorder the economy, politics and society.”
President Javier Milei’s economic shock-therapy has tamed inflation, but at huge social cost, reports the New York Times.
Ecuador
Low-quality polling complicates predictions for Ecuador’s February presidential election. Noboa likely has a slim lead now, but this could be affected by negative economic trends, writes James Bosworth at Latin America Risk Report. “A surge of violence in January and February feels not just possible but likely as the criminal groups try to influence national and local political dynamics.”
“Ecuador is moving one step closer to complete its second debt-for-nature swap with more than $1.5 billion of the nation’s existing dollar bonds on track to be canceled,” reports Bloomberg.
Regional
Conservative U.S. politicians hyped the supposed threat posed by Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua during this year’s campaign season. But “despite the real threat TdA poses to many Venezuelan migrants, it’s unlikely the group has much power or reach in the U.S., where other organized criminal organizations pose much more of a threat to citizens and TdA itself,” reports Americas Quarterly.
A Nacla roundtable looks at university solidarity encampments in Latin America and the Caribbean as part of a broader horizon of struggles for Palestine.
Guatemala
Guatemalan authorities issued an arrest warrant for journalist Juan Luis Font on charges of collusion and passive bribery. It is the latest case of judicial persecution against anti-corruption journalists, reports the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Haiti
Haiti’s main international airport reopened yesterday to commercial flights, one month after gangs opened fire on planes, reports the Associated Press.
However the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has extended a ban on U.S. commercial and cargo flights traveling to Port-au-Prince and other areas of Haiti until March of next year. (Miami Herald)
Honduras
“Over 3,500 archaeological items have been recovered from the house of a controversial Canadian property magnate in Honduras, adding to a growing list of criminal accusations against the “Porn King” that include money laundering, fraud, and land usurpation,” reports InSight Crime.