Noboa alleges irregularities
Feb. 12, 2025
Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa said Sunday’s presidential election appeared to show “irregularities.” Noboa virtually tied with leftist candidate Luisa González, and will face off against her in an April runoff election.
But independent election observers quickly fired back that there appeared to be no discrepancies with the voting tally, reports Al Jazeera.
The two are fighting over 1.2 million votes that went to other candidates. Leonidas Iza, an Indigenous activist, could be kingmaker, having obtained about half a million votes on Sunday, reports El País.
Regional Relations
Latin Americans would broadly support the use of U.S. military force to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and take on transnational drug cartels, according to a new AtlasIntel poll. “The findings are striking for a region that still holds painful memories of Washington’s meddling during the Cold War. But while Trump has backed aggression toward Venezuela before and is pledging to target drug gangs now, the results appear to reflect fatigue with Maduro and cartel-related violence rather than support for the new US leader,” according to Bloomberg.
Trump’s maximum pressure tactics in Latin America, his protectionist economic measures and the suspension of U.S. foreign aid, could push the region “even closer to China, which has already overtaken the US as the region’s leading trading partner,” experts told the Guardian.
The Chancay megaport in Peru is a symbol of Chinese power in South America — and Trump’s measures are already pushing countries to accelerate plans to use it. “But using the port could also draw unwanted attention to countries that have escaped Trump’s tariff hikes so far. The US president’s special envoy to Latin America, Mauricio Claver-Carone, has already argued that any South American nation using Chancay should face additional tariffs of 60%.” (Guardian)
Florida magnate Harry Sargeant III, a major Republican Party donor who has sought to expand his prior oil and asphalt dealings in Venezuela, worked behind the scenes to facilitate the meeting between Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, “laying the groundwork for a major deal that would allow the Caracas regime to boost its oil sales to the United States in exchange for accepting hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan deportees,” reports the Miami Herald. (See yesterday’s post.)
The fate of 222 Nicaraguan dissidents — whose release from prison was secured by the U.S. Biden administration in 2023 — is now in limbo. The were stripped of their citizenship by Daniel Ortega, and their humanitarian parole in the U.S. expires in three weeks. (Miami Herald)
Nations targeted by the new U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum, including Mexico, said the measures are unfair and threatened to retaliate in a growing trade dispute. (New York Times)
Migration
The sister of one of the Venezuelan migrants sent to Guantanamo Bay rejects U.S. allegations that he is a member of a criminal gang, reports the New York Times.
El Salvador
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s offer to incarcerate U.S. deportees, for a fee, came the same day as a less-publicized offer from the United States: a nuclear cooperation deal, reports CBS. El Salvador is pursuing nuclear power — signing a similar agreement with Argentina in October. It would be the first and only country from Central America to have such an agreement with the U.S.
Bukele’s offer to take criminal deportees is motivated by fear that details of his administration’s dealings with gangs could be exposed in ongoing trials in the U.S., argues Ricardo Valencia in El Faro. (See Feb. 4’s post.)
Colombia
An explosion of violence in Colombia’s Catatumbo last month — more than 80 dead, 54,000 displaced — responds to decades-old territorial battles and failed peace negotiations, but also to a more current factor: the Venezuelan Maduro government’s alliance with Colombia’s National Liberation Army, the ELN guerrilla force, reports the New York Times.
The violence in Catatumbo is the death knell for negotiations with the ELN guerrilla, but likely, also, for President Gustavo Petro’s signature “Total Peace” policy, which aimed to finally quell armed groups after fifty years of conflict. (Guardian)
Colombians overwhelmingly disapproved of Petro’s handling of a dispute with Trump over migrants — in fact, the U.S. leader is more popular in Colombia than the country’s own president, reports Bloomberg.
Haiti
Haiti’s children are increasingly caught in the crossfire of gang violence, forced to carry weapons, spy on police and rival gangs and run errands for gunmen, according to a new report by Amnesty International. (Associated Press)
Argentina
Argentina will have midterm elections this year, but a significant polling gap makes it hard to predict whether President Javier Milei will do well, obtaining a mandate for the second half of his term, or if he will be rebuked by voters, limiting his efforts at reform, according to the Latin America Risk Report. ”If the truth is somewhere in between, Milei does well in the elections but still faces some tough coalition-building problems.”