Orsi wins Frente Amplio primary
July 1, 2023
Uruguayans voted in open primaries yesterday, selecting candidates for the October presidential election. Participation in Sunday’s primaries was voluntary with about 35% of Uruguay’s approximately 2.7 million registered voters casting ballots, reports Bloomberg.
Yamandu Orsi will represent the opposition, left-wing Frente Amplio coalition. Orsi, mayor of Canelones, the country’s second-largest department, obtained 60% of votes, handily defesating Montevideo mayor Carolina Cosse, who had 37% as of late last night. Orsi immediately tapped Cosse to second him on the coalition ticket. Orsi is the protege of former President José Mujica, leader of the Broad Front.
Alvaro Delgado won the nomination for the National Party, the main member of the center-right ruling coalition. President Luis Lacalle Pou cannot run for reelection.
Current polling has the Broad Front slightly ahead for October’s election. However, if the National Party replicates the “multicolor” center-right coalition that currently governs, the race would be tight, reports Reuters. Several presidential hopefuls for the smaller Colorado Party had said they would unite behind Delgado.
All of the seats in Congress will also be up for grabs in the October 27 election.
(Americas Quarterly profiles the main candidates in yesterday’s primaries.)
Mexico
A growing security crisis in Mexico’s southern states, part of an aggressive turf war between cartels vying for drug and migration routes, will be a major challenge for the incoming Sheinbaum administration. “Stabilizing the south will likely require transporting and adapting tactics that have had some success reducing rates of high-impact crimes in wealthier parts of the country,” writes Will Freeman in Americas Quarterly. “Those include having state police and prosecutors coordinate, increasing police salaries, training and screening, and taking an approach to crime-fighting that puts violence reduction first.”
Migration
A Migration Policy Institute report “maps the legal pathways that exist in the hemisphere at present, including those created by regional mobility and residence agreements, visa and circular labor migration policies, and humanitarian protection measures.” - Americas Migration Brief
Extreme heat is a danger to migrants in transit across the Americas: “In the Mexican desert near the US border, security forces are on alert after a man was found dead from heat stroke on the journey to what he hoped would be a better life in North America,” reports AFP. (Via Americas Migration Brief)
Statistics of migrants missing in the Darién Gap are believed to be vastly underreported as “neither Colombia nor Panama has any presence in the region, and neither protocols nor the ability to rescue those who might be suffering from a medical emergency,” write Tim O’Farrell in Pirate Wire Services. “Of those deaths authorities have confirmed, drowning is the most common cause, with exposure being second. Interpersonal violence, like gunshot wounds and stabbings, is also high on the list.”
Regional
Military coups are rare in post-Cold War Latin America: but other threats to democracy persist, including “elected politicians who, having consolidated control, began to undermine democracy by rewriting constitutions to expand their power and extend their time in office,” writes James Bosworth in World Politics Review, after the mysterious attempted coup in Bolivia last week.
Hurricane Beryl shattered records yesterday, becoming the Atlantic’s first Category 4 on record during the month of June. Hurricane warnings were in effect for Barbados, St Lucia, Grenada, and St Vincent and the Grenadines. (Associated Press)
Initial reports suggested widespread damage and flooding from storm surge in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, reports the Miami Herald.
Paleotempestology, the study of ancient hurricanes, “suggests oceans are capable of producing hurricane seasons far more relentless than anything modern society has seen so far,” reports the Washington Post.
Belize
“A controversial state of emergency in Belize to crack down on a surge of gang-related murders and other violent crimes has led to the arrest of nearly a hundred people,” reports the Guardian.
Panama
A Panamanian judge acquitted all 28 defendants in the Panama Papers case, including former employees of the law firm Mossack Fonseca, the Panama-based firm that was the source of leaked documents that exposed the offshore industry in a landmark 2016 media investigation. (New York Times)
Brazil
Brazilian drag Pabllo Vittar is one of the country’s biggest pop stars — and has come to embody the country’s “L.G.B.T.Q. paradox”: Brazil has some of the world’s most expansive gay rights, but for years has also ranked among the deadliest countries for gay and transgender people, according to the New York Times.