
The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Brazil this weekend showcased the relationship between past, present and potential far-right leaders in Latin America. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro — indicted just days ago in a case involving an attempt to embezzle jewelry gifted by Saudi Arabia — hosted rightwing luminaries, including Argentine President Javier Milei and Chilean politician José Antonio Kast. (Bloomberg) El Salvador’s justice and security minister, Gustavo Villatoro, credited with the Bukele administration’s mano dura gang policy was also in attendance.
Brazil’s far right is hoping to leverage municipal elections in October to wage a comeback after defeat in the 2022 presidential elections, reports El País.
Bolsonaro spoke on Saturday (before the French elections) and said the right was gaining ground internationally, in Italy and France, and said he hoped that former U.S. President Donald Trump will be returned to the White House this year, reports Reuters.
Milei spoke to the conference on Sunday. It was his first visit to Brazil, Argentina’s most important trade partner, since taking office in December. He said criminal cases against Bolsonaro amount to political persecution, and warned of the evils of socialism. However, Milei avoided criticizing Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in his speech — amid media reports that Brazilian diplomats were considering pulling the country’s Buenos Aires ambassador if Milei repeated harsh insults against the leftist leader.
Milei opted to skip today’s Mercosur meeting in Paraguay — a snub to the trade bloc, and to Lula, who has demanded an apology from Argentina’s leader. Experts say he has passed up a chance to defuse tensions with Brazil, reports the Associated Press. “He seems to be shooting himself in the foot,” Michael Shifter, a scholar of Latin America at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, said of Milei. “It’s shocking and counterproductive for him to thumb his nose at Lula in this way because there could be a lot of cost for Argentina, that could affect his ability to carry out his policies.”
Milei’s absence adds to a sense of uncertainty regarding Mercosur’s future, reports the Associated Press. “Argentina is promoting a new foreign economic policy, strategically focused on freedom,” Argentine Foreign Minister Diana Mondino told her counterparts in Paraguay. “If it’s not possible to advance as Mercosur, let’s think about the possibility of having bilateral agreements.”
Regional Relations
The U.S. Biden administration has relied on its military too much in its relations with Latin America, a mistake given Washington’s political and social concerns in the region, argue Laura Tedesco and Rut Diamint in Americas Quarterly.
“Chinese influence in Latin American energy is large and impactful, ambiguous, and potentially risky in certain contexts,” according to the Atlantic Council.
Migration
Boom — a new site dedicated to opinion that aims to become a hub for the exchange of ideas in Latin America — launched this weekend with a focus on migration in the Darién and beyond.
El Maldito Darién is a documentary short that follows a group of migrants who risk their lives to cross the Darién Gap, the feared stretch of jungle separating Central and South America across the border between Panama and Colombia — Boom
I also wrote about the Darién, for Cenital: Panama’s new president wants to unilaterally shut down migration across the border and has a new agreement with the U.S. to deport people who make it across — but experts say the plan is unlikely to work, rather repression of one path tends to push migrants to seek more dangerous routes.
On Friday Colombian authorities said Panama’s shutdown — barbed wire shutdown three of the main migrant paths out of the Darién — was not agreed with Colombia and poses a humanitarian risk, reports Infobae. (See last Tuesday’s post.)
El Mostrador highlights the challenges faced by migrant children crossing the desert border from Bolivia into Chile, explaining that “Chile does not have any specialized protection model for migrant children.” (Via Americas Migration Brief)
Juan Martínez d’Aubuisson writes about the netherworld of Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic, where officials and many members of the general population view them as “animals.” (Boom)
Haiti
Evidence in a U.S. court case reveal for the first time that political rivals of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse met with gang leaders to request their help in a plot to assassinate Moïse, three years ago. While the gang leaders ultimately did not play a role in the killing, “Moïse’s death did create a power vacuum that allowed hundreds of gangs to terrorize Haitians in one of the nation’s most violent and destabilizing periods,” reports the Miami Herald.
El Salvador
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele threatened to deploy his infamous gang-crackdown policies — presumably indiscriminate detention — against price gougers. “Well, I’m going to issue a message to the importers, distributors and food wholesalers: stop abusing the people of El Salvador, or don’t complain about what happens afterward,” he said Friday. (Associated Press)
Colombia
The case of a group of former FARC rebels who became tour guides after laying down arms, and who are now threatened by dissident guerrilla factions, is an example of the failures of the landmark 2016 peace deal, reports the Guardian.
Mexico
Mexican president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum should address rampant cartel violence by targeting the most violent gang players and hotspots, as well as addressing an epidemic of extorsion, as she embarks on ambitious social and environmental reform, argues security expert Ioan Grillo in Boom.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is gearing up to be the most powerful lame duck president in history leveraging a super majority in Congress for a final attempt at sweeping constitutional reform, argues James Bosworth in World Politics Review.
Argentina
Also in Boom, Juan Elman interviews Augustín Romo, one of the young influencers whose digital activism helped alchemize the incipient new rightwing in Argentina a few years ago into the movement that catapulted Milei to the presidency. “Well, what we saw through social networks was that before the president decided to get into politics, I'm talking about 2019, there were more people on the right than was thought. Even many Peronists, who did not agree that if an 8-year-old boy says that she is a girl, she should give him hormones and cut off his penis, do you understand me?”
Brazil
“Brazil’s ministry of foreign affairs has been forced to apologize to the embassies of Canada, Gabon and Burkina Faso after three diplomats’ teenage children – all of whom are Black – were searched at gunpoint by police officers,” reports the Guardian. For the public and experts, case is yet another example of racist practices by Brazilian police. “A recent report found that, in 2022, of the more than 1,300 people killed by the police in Rio, 87% were Black, a figure far above the proportion of Afro-Brazilians in the state’s population, which is 58%.”
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reinstated a special commission created to probe dictatorship-era rights violations, which had been dissolved by Bolsonaro, reports AFP.
Regional
At least 16 of the 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries are involved in about 50 major new oil and gas onshore and offshore projects, reports the Guardian. “Even if the world market for fossil fuels starts shrinking by the end of the decade, countries like Brazil, Guyana, Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico and Suriname are betting on oil as a source of wealth, economic growth and development – despite its impact on the planet and thanks to the international community’s inertia in “transitioning away” from the oil era.”
The Amazon faces intense droughts and flooding due to global warming — Marcia Nunes Macedo argues for conservation efforts to contemplate water’s role in regional and global weather pattern stability. — Boom
Caribbean islands devastated by Hurricane Beryl last week could take years to recover economically, according to United Nations representatives. (Miami Herald)
"The earliest Category 5 ever recorded for the Atlantic hurricane season, Beryl’s “arrival jarred Caribbean leaders, who cited concerns about climate change and increased need for aid,” reports the Washington Post.
Ecuador
A “court in Ecuador has ruled that pollution has violated the rights of a river that runs through the country’s capital, Quito,” a decision hailed as historic by environmental activists, reports the Associated Press.
Critter Corner
Brazil’s appetite for shark is putting pressure on several species. “Brazilian law does not allow fishing for any sharks, but they can be landed as bycatch with few restrictions,” reports the Guardian.