Six foreigners — three U.S. citizens, two Spaniards and a Czech citizen — were arrested in Venezuela, Saturday. Officials accused them of plotting to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro.
The arrests were announced on state television by interior minister Diosdado Cabello, who said the foreign citizens were part of a CIA-led plot to overthrow the Venezuelan government and kill several members of its leadership, reports the Associated Press.
Spain, which last week recognized opposition candidate Edmundo González as the official winner of the July presidential election Maduro claims to have won, formed part of the conspiracy, according to Cabello. (Efecto Cocuyo)
The US rejected the claims, which come after Washington placed 16 senior Venezuelan government officials under sanctions, as "categorically false,” reports the BBC.
AMLO’s judicial reform becomes law
Mexico’s judicial reform became law yesterday. It is “the most far-reaching overhaul of a country’s court system ever carried out by a major democracy,” according to the New York Times. One of the most controversial changes makes all federal judges elected by popular vote.
Outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador signed the decree in a video posted on social media, calling it a "historic day." He was accompanied by president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, reports AFP. (See also El País.)
Mexico’s judicial reform will present significant technical challenges for officials and citizens tasked with electing hundreds of federal judges starting next year. They will have to select among thousands of candidates in a modality that requires them to write in their preferred candidate, reports Animal Político.
“In the capital Mexico City, voters will have to choose judges for more than 150 positions, including on the Supreme Court, from a list of 1,000 candidates that most people have never heard of,” details the Financial Times.
AMLO has said the reform will democratize the judiciary — it’s relatively novel and tricky in terms of democratic institutions, explains Facundo Cruz in Cenital.
Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo called the reform an “atrocity.” (La Jornada)
More Mexico
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López called on warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel to act “responsibly”, after a week of escalating violence nearly paralyzed the Sinaloa state capital, Culiacán. (Associated Press)
“Sinaloa has been plagued by violence and insecurity since Monday, September 9, when an internal war broke out between the two most powerful factions of the notorious cartel: the followers of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, versus Los Chapitos, the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán…. Caught in the crossfire, the population has sunk into fear and uncertainty, despite the government’s insistence that “everything is calm” and under control,” reports El País.
Brazilian court seizes Starlink assets to pay X’s fines
Brazil’s Supreme Court said two banks in Brazil had complied with its orders to deduct $3.3 million in fines from the Brazilian accounts of X and Starlink, two companies controlled by Elon Musk. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered seizure of the assets equivalent to the amount that X owes to the country in fines, in the midst of a standoff with the social media platform company.
The bank accounts of the two companies have since been unfrozen, but X remains blocked.
X has been blocked in Brazil for more than two weeks, after the social media platform failed to comply with orders to block some accounts accused of spreading "fake news" and hate messages that the judge said were a threat to democracy. De Moraes said the accounts remain unaddressed and the social media company still doesn’t have a legal representative in the country, as required by Brazilian law.
De Moraes determined that Starlink could be responsible for X’s fines because they were from the same “de facto economic group,” though Musk questioned the logic.
(Associated Press, New York Times, Reuters)
Brazil’s shutdown of X is unprecedented in a democracy, is it leading the way on controlling corporate power? asks John Naughton in the Observer.
More Brazil
Hundreds people from more than a dozen religious faiths participated in March for the Defense of Religious Freedom in Rio de Janeiro, yesterday, to support religious freedom in Brazil, where cases of intolerance have doubled over the past six years. Human rights minister Macaé Evaristo joined the participants, many of whom were practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions that have recently faced attacks from members of Christian groups, reports the Associated Press.
Brazilian officials say they have nearly reversed the illegal gold rush that led thousands of wildcat miners into the Yanomami reservation in the Amazon rainforest and caused a humanitarian crisis of disease and malnutrition, reports Reuters.
Brazil wants to be a climate champion and an oil giant. Can it be both? asks the Financial Times.
Nearly 60% of of Brazil has been affected by the worst drought in the country in more than seven decades, with a series of arson-fueled fires that have spiraled out of control, devastating protected areas and generating smoke that affects air quality in cities, reports El País.
Severe droughts across Brazil's Amazon rainforest region are drastically altering residents' lives, reports Reuters.
The Ashaninka Indigenous people live in a largely preserved area of Brazil’s western Amazon rainforest: “Over the past three decades, they have taken back their territory from cattle farmers and loggers, replacing pasture with fruit and timber trees, the sacred Ayahuasca vine, acai palm trees and medicinal plants.
With their autonomy secured, the Ashaninka are now working to share their experience with neighbors to protect the whole region from deforestation and overexploitation of its natural resources,” reports the Associated Press.
Pacaraima in Brazil’s Roraima state, has reported a significant increase in Venezuelan migration since the July presidential election, according to El País.
Honduras
Anti-mining activist Juan López was shot and killed in Honduras. President Xiomara Castro vowed justice for the latest such murder in one of the world's most dangerous countries for environmentalists, reports AFP.
Ecuador
As Ecuador heads to a presidential election, one question will be whether President Daniel Noboa pays a political cost for slow-rolling the Yasuni oil drilling ban that a majority of Ecuadorans support, writes James Bosworth in World Politics Review.
Haiti
At least 26 people have died after a tanker truck carrying gasoline exploded in southern Haiti on Saturday. At least 40 people were injured. The tanker had crashed and was leaking fuel, which people were rushing to collect when the vehicle exploded. (Associated Press, BBC)
Migration
U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump promised conduct mass deportations of Haitian immigrants from the Ohio city of Springfield — though the majority of them are in the United States legally, and there are no indications that they have eaten anybody’s household pets. (France 24)
Costa Rica
Costa Rica’s jungle is increasingly being infiltrated by drug cartels seeking new trafficking routes to evade the authorities, reports the New York Times. And with the rising drug trafficking, a surge of violence has hit the nation.
Argentina
Argentine President Javier Milei has announced that he intends to eliminate the budget deficit entirely next year. He presented an optimistic budget in Congress yesterday, that forecasts growth of 5 per cent next year, after an expected 3.8 per cent contraction this year. It also forecasts prices rising just 18.3 per cent in the 2025 calendar year after expected inflation of 122.9 per cent this year, reports the Financial Times.
Peru
Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was buried on Saturday, and leaves a country grappling with his complex legacy of economic reform, counterinsurgency operations, and human rights violations, report Reuters.
Thousands of supporters lined up in Lima in three days of national mourning, to pay respects to Fujimori’s casket. Peruvian President Dina Boluarte saluted the former president before his burial, reports the Associated Press.
Fujimori’s “rule killed people and their illusions, imposing death and fear as a weapon of social discipline. Amid rumors of a 2026 “family presidential ticket” with Alberto as the presidential candidate, his death leaves Keiko as the sole inheritor and wielder of a gruesome legacy of state terror, human rights violations, and the dismantling of democracy,” writes Javier Puente in Nacla. “The judgment of Alberto’s lost decade now belongs to history and to the collective memory of all Peruvians. Other battles, political and cultural, lie ahead. So does restoring the illusions and collective hope of having a country and a nation despite Fujimori.”
Chile
Chilean President Gabriel Boric “has been unable to accomplish any of his promised structural reforms … But he might be forging a more durable legacy: from the 2019 protests that propelled his meteoric rise to back-to-back attempts at rewriting the Constitution and the missteps of an administration in search of identity, Boric is unwittingly steering Chile back to the successful moderate politics that preceded him,” writes Patricia Garip in Americas Quarterly.
I spoke with Peter Kornbluh, of the National Security Archive on the fiftieth anniversary of the New York Times story that revealed CIA covert operations in Chile, and of the documents that show how Henry Kissinger misled President Gerald Ford about clandestine U.S. efforts to undermine the elected government of Socialist Party leader Salvador Allende. (Cenital)