Migration meeting in Guatemala
May 8, 2024
Representatives from 22 Western Hemisphere countries gathered in Guatemala City yesterday for a regional conference on migration, inaugurated by Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The meeting is part of continuing talks connected to the Los Angeles Declaration, a 2022 agreement signed by the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil and other countries. The agreement stipulated that each country was responsible for securing its borders and that the countries would promote new legal migration efforts.
Blinken said yesterday that advances had been made in commitments to offer legal pathways for migration, to provide aid to communities most affected by migration and to coordinate their country’s responses to manage immigration flows. Nonetheless, there was record migration last year through the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama, as well as at the U.S. border.
Blinken warned that the U.S. will sanction those who facilitate irregular migration, in reference to charter flights to Nicaragua with migrants headed for the U.S.
(New York Times, Associated Press, AFP, AFP)
More Migration
“Several Latin American journalistic outlets documented migrant smugglers’ dangerous but widespread use of tractor-trailers as a key vector for moving people through Mexico to the U.S. border. … The report found that endemic corruption at all levels of government enables the smugglers’ operation.” (Contra Corriente; via Americas Migration Brief)
Intercepts of migrants by Mexico has tripled in the first quarter of the year to almost 360,000 people amid increasing operations, reports EFE.
Haiti
Haiti’s newly installed transitional council is at risk of unraveling, and is mired in controversy over the way it has made key decisions, reports the Miami Herald. In response to the council’s internal crisis, “the majority of the council’s seven-voting members has agreed to invalidate the choice of Edgard Leblanc Fils as president of the council, and institute, instead a rotating presidency among four of them.”
Thousands of families in Haiti made homeless by gang violence “have taken over dozens of schools, churches and even government buildings. Many places have no running water, flushing toilets or garbage pickup,” reports the New York Times. About 90,000 people are living in improvised shelters in Port-au-Prince.
Regional Relations
Tech billionaire Elon Musk and U.S. Republican Party lawmakers have boosted the flagging fortunes of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, reports the New York Times. Musk’s criticisms over the past month of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes’ investigations into Bolsonaro have shifted the national political debate. “Brazil’s Congress effectively killed a long anticipated bill on combating online misinformation, and the Supreme Court said it would rule on a lawsuit that challenges Brazil’s main internet law.”
Brazil
Madonna’s weekend concert in Rio de Janeiro was a slap in the face to Bolsonaro supporters’ socially conservative mores — although several prominent right-wing leaders were spotted in the crowd. (Guardian)
The death toll from flooding in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state, which authorities call the worst climate disaster ever to strike the country’s south, has risen to 90. More than 155,000 people have been displaced. (Guardian)
Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro received an important donation of more than a thousand fossils as part of a campaign to help rebuild the institution’s collection lost in a massive fire nearly six years ago. (Guardian)
Colombia
Colombian President Gustavo Petro criticized the ELN guerrilla group’s decision to resume kidnapping as a financing tool. The human body is not merchandise, said Petro. (EFE)
Petro promised to “destroy” what he called “structural” corruption within the government, after a scandal involving alleged misuse of funds in the purchase of government vehicles. (Associated Press)
Political uncertainty is affecting investment in Colombia and the country’s economic growth prospects, reports Americas Quarterly.
Mexico
A heatwave roiling Mexico caused record temperatures in Mexico City. Authorities announced rolling blackouts and a state of national emergency for the power grid. (New York Times)
Anthropocene
Hunger and disease are rising in Latin America after a year of record heat, floods and drought, according to a report by the World Meteorological Organization. “The continent, which is trapped between the freakishly hot Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, probably suffered tens of thousands of climate-related deaths in 2023, at least $21bn (£17bn) of economic damage and “the greatest calorific loss” of any region, the study found.” — Guardian
Venezuela has lost its last remaining glacier after it shrunk so much that scientists reclassified it as an ice field. It is thought Venezuela is the first country to have lost all its glaciers in modern times, reports the Guardian.