Mexico "pauses" relations with U.S., Canada embassies
Aug. 28, 2024
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador suspended relations with the U.S. and Canadian embassies, after those nations’ ambassador’s to Mexico criticized his flagship judicial reform proposal. (See Monday’s post on the judicial reform proposal)
"There is a pause," López Obrador said in a press conference yesterday, clarifying that the freeze was with the embassies and not with the countries. It is not immediately clear what the move implies concretely.
Yesterday, Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena backed Lopez Obrador in a message on social media, but also said that the relationship with "friends and neighbors in North America" was a priority and remained "fluid and normal" on a daily basis.
Last week Canada’s ambassador said investors are concerned about the judicial reform proposal, while U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar last week labeled the reform a "major risk to the functioning of Mexico's democracy" and cautioned of a potential risk to the U.S.-Mexico trade relationship.
Yesterday, after AMLO’s announcement, he posted a note on social media: "The United States supports the concept of judicial reform in Mexico, but we have significant concerns that the popular election of judges would neither address judicial corruption nor strengthen the judicial branch of the Government of Mexico.”
AMLO and president-elect Sheinbaum reject the comments as interference in the country’s internal affairs. Yesterday Sheinbaum said she also supported López Obrador’s decision to suspend relations with the U.S. Embassy “in the face of the insult levied by the ambassador.”
(Reuters, New York Times, Los Angeles Times)
More Mexico
The contentious dispute over the reform “highlights the growing unease in Mexico over the prospect that Mr. López Obrador and his political party, Morena, are trying to lock in the political advantages they have now over a much longer period of time,” reports the New York Times.
Alex González Ormerod explains how Morena, which obtained a landslide victory in June’s general elections, also skillfully fielded allied party candidates within its coalition to avoid limits on any single party being “overrepresented,” permitting it to obtain a super majority in the incoming Congress. But this also means “Morena is less powerful than it might initially seem,” he writes in The Mexico Political Economist. “They will have to give their allies (plus three opposition senators) what they want to get their bills through Congress.” (See also The Mexico Political Economist and Monday’s post.)
Venezuela
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said her lawyer, Perkins Rocha, has been kidnapped by government security forces. (Guardian, BBC)
In a cabinet reshuffle yesterday, Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro named hardliner Diosdado Cabello Interior Minister. Human rights groups fear that Cabello’s appointment, with oversight of Venezuela’s police forces, will intensify the government’s heavy-handed response to protests, reports the Associated Press.
In the reshuffle Maduro brought in new figures to lead the oil, finance, and interior ministries, among others. Vice President Delcy Rodriguez will remain in her post, but add the oil ministry to her brief, reports Al Jazeera.
A month after Venezuela’s disputed elections, Boris Muñoz takes stock in El País: opposition efforts have decisively exposed Maduro’s authoritarian system of power, but “while they have gained recognition and overwhelming international support, at home they have been forced into a trench.” As international mediation fizzles, efforts should focus on undermining military support for Chavismo, he argues. “The elections prove that the former social base of Chavismo has said no more and is willing to take a gamble for a democratic future. The opposition should take advantage of this fact to rebuild a broad resistance based on a polyclassist social pact ...”
Brazilian diplomat Celso Amorim said the suggestion of carrying out new elections in Venezuela is aimed at escaping the impasse in which both Maduro and the opposition claim to have won July 28’s presidential vote. “There is no magical exit,” he said in an interview with El País.
Caracas Chronicles reports on the ruling PSUV party election monitors — the “missing link” in the disputed claims over the election results. Most have stayed silent, a few corroborate the opposition’s claim of a massive electoral upset for Maduro.
Venezuelan journalists are using artificial intelligence avatars to broadcast news, in a context of government repression against dissidents, activists and journalists. Carlos Eduardo Huertas, the director of Connectas, the Colombia-based journalism platform coordinating the initiative, said the use of AI was a response to “the persecution and the growing repression that our colleagues are suffering in Venezuela, where the uncertainty over the safety of doing their job … grows by the minute”. (Guardian)
Nicaragua
A Nicaraguan army base just south of Managua “has become one of Russia's main espionage centers,” reports Confidencial. “Sources who have had access to the military installation claim that Russian officials are the only ones who can operate the equipment and access the information gathered. Nicaraguan officers are limited to providing “security” at the base.”
Migration
“The early July announcement of deportations and the new Panamanian government’s other efforts to limit Darién migration has caused a moderate pause in the flow of migration through Central America. 24,133 refugees and migrants transited Honduras in July, a 15 percent decrease from June, according to a monthly update from UNHCR.” (Americas Migration Brief)
Colombia
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said he reached an agreement with private banks to lend to “productive” sectors in a bid to help reactivate the nation’s stagnant economy. The deal replaces an initial government plan to send a bill to congress forcing banks to provide cheap financing, reports Bloomberg.
Colombia's Supreme Court indicted the country's current ambassador to Nicaragua for drug trafficking, six years after he was arrested with nearly 350 grams of cocaine in a suitcase, reports AFP.
A Colombian government initiative to help communities move away from farming coca has stalled, while a surge in global cocaine use has made demand for the plant higher than ever, reports the Guardian.
Argentina
Argentina’s justice minister said “we reject sexual identity diversities, which do not align with biology, they are subjective inventions.” He spoke in Argentina’s Congress, where several lawmakers angrily responded that his position counters decades of activism and legislative reform that puts the country at the fore of LGBTQ rights in the region. (Infobae)
Argentine Vice-President Victoria Victoria Villarruel promised to reopen criminal cases investigating the deaths of victims of left-wing guerrilla fighters in the 1970s. Human rights activists say the move is an apology for state terrorism carried out by the country’s last dictatorship and reject her stance as denialism. (Buenos Aires Times, Buenos Aires Herald)
Villarruel’s speech comes in the midst of a scandal over a visit by ruling party lawmakers to former officials of the dictatorship, who are imprisoned for human rights violations. This weekend a lawmaker revealed draft bills to drop charges against alleged dictatorship torturers, reports the Buenos Aires Herald.
Haiti
Haitian youth are flocking for the chance to join the once reviled military, a rare opportunity to get work in the impoverished country, reports the Associated Press.
Regional
“A decade and a half after the heyday of the pink tide and the constituent processes in Ecuador and Bolivia, many have reflected on efforts to build plurinational states, particularly in these two countries. Although these landmark constitutions officially recognized the state as plurinational, marginalized Indigenous peoples are disputing the meaning of those words and challenging formal plurinational institutions. For many, the lofty promises of a top-down plurinationalism remain outstanding,” write Romina Green Rioja, Roger Merino, Nayla Luz Vacarezza in Nacla.
Critter Corner
The Guardian Long Reads tackles the perennial issue of Pablo Escobar’s hippos in Colombia, and how the danger of the invasive animal relates to the drug kingpin’s own legacy.