Colombian journalist Rafael Moreno was assassinated last year — but an international consortium of journalists continued his work, revealing “a massive system of cronyism in the province of Córdoba and the probable embezzlement of up to several million dollars across five municipalities – a vast scheme Moreno had spent his career trying to take down and may have paid for with his life,” reports Forbidden Stories.
“To Moreno’s killers: you were wrong. This week, 32 media outlets around the world are publishing Moreno’s investigations. Killing the journalist won’t kill the story,” writes Laurent Richard, director of the Forbidden Stories consortium.
The consortium investigated three of the mines Moreno had worked on, “finding significant irregularities in their operations and in most cases confirming the hunches Moreno himself had made public in the months and years before his death, including failures to consult with indigenous communities, mines operating without a license and environmental damage caused to local communities and ecosystems,” reports El País.
A France 24 team continued Moreno’s investigation into Cerro Matoso, an open-pit nickel mine in Colombia. For 40 years, its operation by an Australian company has been eating away at the ancestral land of the Zenú Indians, who accuse the mine of spreading disease and desolation on their land.
El Salvador
El Salvador’s Bukele administration blocked the IMF from publishing its annual report on the country’s economy and public finances, completed last month. The government also blocked the related press release, according to the multilateral organization. The move is “striking,” reports El Faro, “given that the country is looking to spur the negotiation of a debt program and this year, to that end, hired a former top IMF official as an advisor.”
More Colombia
Colombian Defense Minister Iván Velásquez faces a difficult balancing act: challenging the country’s criminal organizations, but also the military he is tasked with leading, reports Americas Quarterly.
Regional Relations
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador accused the U.S. of spying on Mexico’s military and said he would begin classifying information from the armed forces to protect national security. The move follows media reports of leaked U.S. intelligence information. (Reuters, Bloomberg)
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reiterated calls for a group of nations to mediate peace between Russia and Ukraine, a day after the U.S. criticized his statements about the conflict, reports the Guardian. (See yesterday’s post.)
Ukraine’s government also criticized Lula’s statements, which blamed both countries for the fighting, and invited the Brazilian leader to visit the war-torn country. (Guardian)
Despite diplomatic back and forths, analysts have noted that Lula is continuing a long-standing “tradition of “nonaligned” Brazilian foreign policy, one which does not hew in the United States’ direction, but nor does it seek to act in antagonism to the West,” explains the Washington Post Worldviews.
“Yet, for all the anger that Washington will have over Lula’s trip, Brazil remains one of the best potential partners that the US has in the hemisphere,” writes James Bosworth at the Latin America Risk Report. “And it’s a hemisphere where the US needs help because no unilateral solution exists to the political and economic crises, the challenges or security, or the competition that the US is convinced it is engaged in with China.”
Indeed, on the issue of the Ukraine conflict, developing nations’ neutrality is pragmatic as well as ideological, according to Matias Spektor, a professor of international relations at Fundação Getulio Vargas. “These countries are pursuing a strategy of hedging because they see the future distribution of global power as uncertain and wish to avoid commitments that will be hard to discharge.” (Foreign Affairs)
“The countries of the global South are poised to hedge their way into the mid-twenty-first century. They hedge not only to gain material concessions but also to raise their status, and they embrace multipolarity as an opportunity to move up in the international order,” writes Spektor. (Foreign Affairs)
A Venezuelan opposition representative in the U.S. called for easing of sanctions against the Maduro administration, saying the country risks becoming a new “Cuba.” The Latin America Advisor explores what looser sanctions would imply.
“The Venezuelan government and the Unitary Platform of Venezuela need the international community’s support in reaching agreements and delivering proposals under a revised scheme of reciprocal gestures that might lead to a more democratic regime with free and fair elections, in exchange for the easing of current U.S. sanctions,” writes Colombian ambassador to the U.S. Luis Gilberto Murillo. (Latin America Advisor)
Chile
Chile’s renewable energy companies are asking the government to speed up investment in electrical distribution networks — and for market reform to guarantee that they receive the correct remuneration for the electricity they sell, reports El País.
Chile’s new security laws, granting police greater leeway in responding to suspected criminals, “risks sending the country down a road that leads to spiraling cycles of violence,” according to InSight Crime. (See April 11’s post.)
Mexico
Ioan Grillo’s new book focuses on “the vast “iron river” of firearms that flow from the legal U.S. market into the hands of cartels in Mexico and are used in violence that has devastated this country.” (Narco Politics)
Regional
Interpol said its largest-ever fire arms operation across Central and South America resulted in the seizure of thousands of illegal weapons and $5.7 billion worth of drugs after unprecedented cooperation by 15 countries, reports Reuters.
Argentina
Argentina’s Buenos Aires city police will start using Taser stun guns, as its opposition-run government seeks to address security concerns in an election year, reports the Associated Press.
Brazil
Brazil’s government said it will increase spending on school security and crack down on the incitement of violence, in response to a wave of fatal attacks on education establishments, reports the Associated Press.
Brazil’s booming beef industry is a challenge for Amazon conservation efforts — Deutsche Welle.
Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, a Brazilian historian and anthropologist, talks about Brazil’s democracy and the Lula administration’s challenges in an interview with journalist Marina Dias — Colombia Journalism Review
Honduras
“The Honduran government’s announcement that it would reform tax incentives and exonerations for foreign and national businesses provoked an unnecessarily dire response,” according to Vicki Gass in El Faro. Instead, she argues, the move “should be supported as sound and responsible fiscal management.”
Cuba
There are 1,066 political prisoners in Cuba, including 17 minors, according to activist estimates. Participants at an OAS hosted event, yesterday,, including dissidents, journalists and OAS officials, emphasized the country’s deteriorated human rights situation. (Miami Herald)
Star Gazing
A consortium of 13 universities and institutions aims to build the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile’s Atacama desert, a multibillion-dollar instrument more powerful than any existing ground-based telescope, reports the New York Times.