Lula defends Global South

June 4, 2025

Regional Relations

• The upcoming BRICS meeting in Rio de Janeiro “is not about taking a stance for or against Trump,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told Le Monde. “Brazil wants to maintain good relations with China as well as with the United States. We do not want a return to the Cold War. However, the countries of the South have been treated for too long as mere developing nations that posed no problem to anyone. That era is over. The BRICS now account for 39% of global GDP and more than half the world's population. We have become an essential economic and political player to be reckoned with.”

• Lula promised to defend his country's Supreme Court against attacks from the United States, in a sharp rebuke of potential sanctions from Washington against justice Alexandre de Moraes, reports Reuters.

• A history of U.S. policy failure towards Venezuela, has investors questioning what will happen with Trump’s maximum pressure strategy against Nicolás Maduro this time around, according to Michael Stott at the Financial Times.

Brazil

• Lula signed a new law to expand the country’s affirmative action policies, increasing the quota for government jobs reserved for Blacks from 20% to 30% and adding Indigenous people and descendants of Afro-Brazilian enslaved people as beneficiaries, reports the Associated Press.

• Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will be questioned, next week, in a Supreme Court case in which he is accused of planning a coup to remain in power. (AFP)

Mexico

• Though Mexico’s ruling Morena party now has a Supreme Court aligned with its interests, Sunday’s judicial elections are not a great victory — “abstention was high and blank ballots were high even among those who voted. This failure has led to infighting within Morena,” notes James Bosworth at the Latin America Risk Report. (See yesterday’s post.)

• Bosworth is also critical of the opposition’s decision to boycott the exercise: “Given how low the turnout was, this was an election where a few pro-democracy or Morena critics could have won key seats. They probably could not have swept to victory, but a 7-2 or 6-3 court would be a better limited check than the 9-0 court that Sheinbaum now has in her favor.” Latin America Risk Report

Deportations

• The U.S. Justice Department disclosed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading negotiations for the return of “Cristian,” a Venezuelan man sent to a Salvadoran prison, who was deported in spite of court-ordered protections, reports The Hill.

• Cuba tried to improve its relations with the U.S. by cooperating with Trump’s deportation flights. But even as Havana continues to accept its citizens deported from the U.S., Cuba finds itself increasingly at odds with the Trump administration, reports Politico.

El Salvador

• “El Salvador’s arrest of an anticorruption lawyer from a well-known human rights organization last month is the latest example of how special powers given to President Nayib Bukele to battle the country’s gangs are being applied to a host of unrelated alleged crimes,” according to the Associated Press.

Haiti

• Haiti is one of five countries in the world facing catastrophic levels of hunger, with nearly half the population going without food, according to the regional director of the United Nations food agency. The World Food Program’s supplies in Haiti are rapidly disappearing and here isn’t enough food to help with new emergencies or new people forced to flee their homes after July, reports the Miami Herald. Of the record 5.7 million Haitians experiencing severe hunger, 8,400 face outright starvation while 2 million are already in an emergency phase.

• Gangs currently control 28 major neighborhoods in Haiti according to a report published this week by the Center for Analysis and Research in Haiti. In the quest for control, gangs have killed, raped and forced the relocation of 102 public institutions and 622 private ones, some of which have been vandalized and burned, the report noted. (Miami Herald)

• So-called self-defense brigades, which sprouted to confront gangs, are adding a new layer of terror in Haiti. In the midst of a power-vacuum, they are now themselves driving the violence in some communities and giving birth to a new crisis, reports the Miami Herald. In one recent episode, brigade members beheaded several people in a church in the Artibonite region.

Colombia

• Colombia’s ambitious plans for wind energy development, especially in the resource-rich La Guajira region, are facing serious setbacks as major companies pull out and projects stall, reports the Associated Press.

Argentina

• This week marks a decade since the first Ni Una Menos, the anti-femicide demonstrations in Argentina that launched a region-wide women’s rights movement. (Buenos Aires Times)

El Salvador

• The trial of three retired Salvadoran military officers for the 1982 killings of four Dutch journalists during the Central American country’s civil war started yesterday in Chalatenango, reports the Associated Press.

Ecuador

• Ecuador has deployed 1,800 soldiers to the country’s Amazon region, response to one of the bloodiest attacks on Ecuador’s security forces in recent history, in which 11 soldiers were killed in May. But the operation “will do little to slow one of the country’s most lucrative criminal economies,” according to InSight Crime.

Panama

• Chiquita Panama's administrative staff have left the country and the firm will seek authorization from the government to fire its remaining personnel in Panama, reports Reuters.

Costa Rica

• The International Monetary Fund said it had approved a $1.5 billion, two-year precautionary flexible line of credit for Costa Rica, reports Reuters.

Flora and Fauna

• A record amount of sargassum — brown prickly algae — has piled up across the Caribbean and nearby areas in May, and more is expected this month. (Associated Press)