Latin America Daily Briefing

Aug 30, 2023

Haiti

As a potential Kenya-led international security mission to Haiti gathers steam, critics have voiced concern about the Kenyan police force’s human rights record, cultural clashes and a language barrier — “The Kenyan police have been involved in human rights violations and they don’t speak Kreyol nor French,” Pierre Espérance, executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network in Haiti told The New Humanitarian.
The U.N. Secretary General’s recommendation to deploy “robust” force in Haiti is essentially a euphemism for “bloodbath,” argues Karl Watts in the Jamaica Gleaner.

Mexico

More than 1,500 people were killed or disappeared by security forces in Mexico over the past 18 years, according to a new study, “Permission to Kill” that documents a specific group of victims: those who have no connection to organized crime, reports Animal Político.
Two candidates for the Mexican ruling MORENA party presidential spot — Marcelo Ebrard and Claudia Sheinbaum — closed their nomination campaigns last weekend, reports the Associated Press. The candidate will be chosen this week in an internal party survey, the results of which will be announced on Sept. 6.

Migration

A new report by InSight Crime challenges the typical portrayal of human trafficking as being controlled by large, organized crime groups. “The reality on the US-Mexico border illustrates there is a far wider array of groups behind this problem.”

Regional Relations

U.S. President Joe Biden hosted his Costa Rican counterpart, Rodrigo Chaves, yesterday in Washington. They discussed migration, trade and efforts to crack down on organized crime, reports the New York Times. After the meeting, the U.S. announced it would send more than $12 million to Costa Rica for migration issues. Costa Rica recently agreed to build two centers where migrants can be processed for legal protections without attempting to illegally cross the U.S. border.
The BRICS shouldn’t be conceived as an anti-West alliance, argue a group of academics in Anfibia. "Thinking about the BRICS requires setting aside dichotomies and, instead, paying attention to nuances, complexities and multifaceted agendas. This heterogeneity accounts for another way of dealing with difference in international politics, for the possibility of coexisting with it and in it: neither a single political regime, nor a single way of relating to religion, nor a single way of relating to others, nor a single possible mode of development."

Ecuador

Security is a major concern in Ecuador’s presidential election — but the two final candidates are helpless against the main driver of the country’s criminal economy: cocaine prices, according to InSight Crime. “The increase in cocaine production and proceeds coincided with a startling rise in homicides in Ecuador … That rise in violence aligns geographically with the country’s main cocaine corridors”

Colombia

The (likely temporary) collapse in coca prices has caused an acute humanitarian crisis in Colombian rural territories — an offers a rare opportunity “for Colombia to fill vacuums of civilian government presence in territories where insecurity, armed groups, and now hunger are all too common,” argues Adam Isacson in a WOLA report.
“Pamphlets dropped in Bogotá and videos circulating on social media suggest a looming conflict between Colombian drug trafficking outfit the Gaitanistas, and Venezuelan transnational gang, Tren de Aragua. Experts, however, question the power and influence of these criminal organizations in the Colombian capital,” reports InSight Crime.

Caribbean

The descendants of the former British prime minister William Gladstone have apologized for their family’s past as enslavers in Guyana, and for their role in indentureship. They called on the UK to discuss reparations in the Caribbean. — Just Caribbean Updates

Guyana

Activists in Guyana have been targets of threats in recent months — women protesting extractive industries and sexual violence have been threatened with death and other forms of intimidation, reports Janine Mendes-Franco at Global Voices. (See today’s Just Caribbean Updates.)

Brazil

Acai has been lauded as a way to bring “green development” to the Amazon, but experts say it is also threatening the rainforest’s biodiversity, as single-crop fields of acai palms become increasingly common, reports Al Jazeera.

Chile

Chile’s Supreme Court definitively convicted of seven former military officers for the assassination of singer-songwriter Victor Jara, nearly fifty years after he was killed in the wake of the coup d’état against Salvador Allende. (El País)