Regional
Latin American opinion journalism lags far behind the innovative vitality of its newsrooms — a failing all the more grave in the region’s context of political polarization, argues editor Boris Muñoz in El País. “There is no perfect antidote to misinformation, toxic speech, and the plague of authoritarian populism, but offering readers more creative, diverse, and pluralistic opinion journalism will help … to energize freedom of expression and independent critical thinking.”
Organized crime groups use violence to manipulate elections in Mexico and Brazil, according to a new report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. But surprisingly, some parts of Mexico that are most afflicted by organized crime suffered few attacks against local officials, likely because illegal groups may wield so much power that violence is no longer necessary for coercion, reports InSight Crime.
Country’s participating in last week’s Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris, made some progress on special drawing rights, a key demand of the Bridgetown Initiative. Poorer countries will receive about $100 billion through special drawing rights, a form of currency provided by the International Monetary Fund. (See today’s Just Caribbean Updates.)
The global south deserves a more powerful voice at the world’s top table by expanding the UN security council, said UK foreign secretary James Cleverly at a Chatham House conference. Without bold strategic reform, he said, “there is a real risk that the global south will walk away from the global trading system”. (Guardian)
Chile temporarily took over leadership of Latin America's Pacific Alliance on Wednesday after Mexico refused to hand over the rotating presidency of the trade bloc to Peruvian President Dina Boluarte. (Reuters)
Migration
Restrictive U.S. migration policies have had a number of unintended consequences along the U.S.-Mexico border, making human smuggling the most lucrative criminal economy in the area. A new in-depth InSight Crime investigation “analyzes the ways in which Mexican organized crime groups have become involved in human smuggling as risks rose, prices surged, and migrants began to move through less-traveled corridors.”
Mexico
A heatwave afflicting Mexico has raised concerns about a potential sharp surge in deaths and illnesses, as well as the stress being placed on the energy grid, reports the New York Times.
More than 20 people have died from heatstroke in the past two weeks, and experts say a lack of investment has left the Mexican electric system unprepared for the rising temperatures that could become more common due to climate change, reports the Guardian.
Fourteen police employees abducted at gunpoint on a local highway in Mexico’s Chiapas state are victims of a new turf battle between cartels for control of drug and immigrant trafficking in the state, which borders Guatemala, reports the Guardian.
Haiti
United Nations human rights official William O’Neill called for an immediate arms embargo for Haiti and an intervention force to combat endemic gang violence, after the killings of more than 200 gang members in recent months. (Guardian)
Edna Bonhomme pushes back against the Haitian “poverty narrative” in Esquire. “It is not a matter of inherent or seamless violence but what it means to live in a country where people have been left to fend for themselves. In other words, people don’t want charity or to be labeled perennially poor; they want meaning and autonomy over their lives.”
Regional Relations
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu hosted Cuba’s Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, Gen. Alvaro Lopez Miera, on Tuesday. The meeting with the Cuban military delegation is another signal of the two countries’ close relationship amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, reports the Miami Herald.
Jamaica is joining Barbados in the ranks of Caribbean “minisuperpowers,” reports the Miami Herald: “After years of being hobbled by crippling debt, double-digit deficits and negative growth, Jamaica, the largest island in the English-speaking Caribbean, is showing its ability to weather crises — and its hard-won economic stability is getting noticed along with the leadership of its prime minister.”
Paraguay
The Aquidaban ferry has been the only regular service deep into Paraguay’s Pantanal wetland for decades, traveling 500 miles up and down the Paraguay River, “delivering everything from dirt bikes to newborns.” But new roads carved across the country’s remote north threaten the regional institution, reports the New York Times.
Uruguay
Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou’s efforts to appropriately place (or dispose of) a Nazi artifact salvaged from the Rio de la Plata are foundering amid intense national and international disagreement, reports the Washington Post.
On the 1st of July in Amsterdam at the commemoration of the abolition of slavery on that date in 1863, 160 years ago, King Willem Alexander of the Netherlands offered his apology for the role of the State of the Netherlands and its West Indian Company for the practice of slavery in its Caribbean and South American colonies. For 300 years Africans were abducted, cruelly deported and inhumanely put to work on the Dutch plantations on the Caribbean islands of Curaçao, Aruba, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, Saba, Sint Maarten and on the South American mainland Suriname. The Dutch participation in the slave-trade consisted of approximately 600.000 persons.
Moreover he asked for forgiveness as to the passivity of his own family, the house of Oranje-Nassau, in respect to this practice during this period, due to the benefits they obtained from it. These excuses were directed at the inhabitants of the said territories that are still part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and Suriname which gained independence in 1975. He mentioned the present day consequences of the tradition of slavery reflected in racism and discrimination still present in Dutch society. This commemoration is meant to be part of the struggle against this.