U.S. reportedly willing to offer Maduro amnesty
Aug. 12, 2024
The U.S. government “is pursuing a long-shot bid to push Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to give up power in exchange for amnesty,” reported the Wall Street Journal yesterday.
“The U.S. has discussed pardons for Maduro and top lieutenants of his who face Justice Department indictments, said three people familiar with the Biden administration deliberation. One of the people said the U.S. has put “everything on the table” to persuade Maduro to leave before his term ends in January. Another person familiar with the talks said the U.S. would be open to providing guarantees not to pursue those regime figures for extradition.”
McClatchy reports that the Biden administration has not offered Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his aides any form of amnesty to leave power in Venezuela, “but is open to all possibilities as it works to find a way out of the country’s political crisis,” according to a senior administration official.
But rather than take the lead in pushing Maduro to recognize defeat, the Biden administration is backing leftist Latin American governments’ efforts to persuade him to yield, reports the Washington Post.
Brazil, Colombia and Mexico are leading diplomatic efforts aimed at getting Venezuela’s government to the negotiating table with the opposition. The leaders of the three countries are scheduled to discuss in a virtual meeting soon, and then talk with opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia and and Maduro, reports Globo.
Maduro has not heeded repeated calls to present complete voting tallies. Should he fail to do so, “Brazil will not recognize Maduro’s triumph, but neither will it break off relations with Venezuela. Our relationship will be strained,” a Brazilian diplomat told Globo journalist Janaína Figueiredo. Russian and Chinese support is key for Maduro’s defiance of U.S. demands, she writes separately in Globo.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula’s stance on Venezuela “has reignited familiar discussions about Brazil’s foreign policy strategy,” writes Oliver Stuenkel in Americas Quarterly. “Similarly to its response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Brazil has sought to craft a “neutral strategy,” predictably enraging those who say the facts are too clear to justify fence-sitting. “
More Venezuela
Maduro gave a scathing response to an offer from his Panamanian counterpart, Jose Raul Mulino, to allow safe passage to a third country to allow for a political transition — accusing the Panamanian president of getting carried away by U.S. interests. (Reuters)
International Criminal Court prosecutors they are “actively monitoring” events in Venezuela, where the government has carried out a severe crackdown against the opposition in the aftermath ofJuly’s presidential election. (Associated Press)
“The Venezuelan government has mounted a furious campaign against anyone challenging the declared results of the vote, unleashing a wave of repression that human rights groups say is unlike anything the country has seen in recent decades,” reports the New York Times.
Venezuela’s main opposition leader, María Corina Machado, said this weekend that Maduro has unleashed a horrific “campaign of terror” in an attempt to cling on to power. (Guardian)
“Venezuela's supreme court on Saturday said that it had not received evidence from the opposition coalition in the disputed July 28 presidential elections and warned that its decision in determining the winner would be final,” reports Reuters. The opposition said it has not handed over the tallies it obtained due to security concerns — the country’s top court is loyal to the government.
Venezuela’s political opposition was able to obtain voting tallies despite obstacles placed by authorities. It was “a meticulously planned operation involving tens of thousands of opposition volunteers working together to reveal the true outcome of the election,” reports the Guardian.
Zambada kidnapped to the U.S.
Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, said in a statement Saturday that he was ambushed and secretly flown to the United States after being invited to a meeting supposedly involving the governor of Sinaloa state. Zambada said he was tricked by the son of a former Sinaloa ally, Joaquín Guzmán, “further evidence of a dramatic split between two leading cartel factions,” reports the Washington Post. (Reuters)
The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, confirmed Zambada was brought to the United States against his will. “This was an operation between cartels, where one turned the other one in,” Salazar said. He denied the U.S. used resources nor violated Mexican sovereignty in Zambada’s rendition. (Associated Press, El País, Washington Post, Jornada)
El País reports that Mexico’s López Obrador administration was caught by surprise by the detention — and that the case has sparked tensions between Mexico and the U.S.
There have been conflicting accounts of how Zambada was arrested, with some versions saying he had negotiated a deal with the DEA to turn himself in. A lawyer for the younger Joaquín Guzmán, who was detained in Texas two weeks ago with Zambada, has denied he lured the elder drug kingpin onto the plane or cut a deal with U.S. authorities.
Sinaloa governor Rubén Rocha denied a planned meeting with Zambada, saying he was not even in the state that day. (El País) Rocha has consistently denied cooperating with cartels, but the Sinaloa investigative magazine RioDoce reported that when Rocha ran for governor in 2021, cartel operatives contributed to his victory by kidnapping more than 20 political operatives working for his opponent on the eve of the election, reports the Washington Post.
Brazil
Sixty-two people were killed in a São Paulo-bound passenger plane crash on Friday. It was the world’s deadliest airline crash since 2023, when 72 people died on board a plane in Nepal. (New York Times, Associated Press, AFP, Reuters)
A proposed commercial waterway through Brazil’s Pantanal wetland could spell the “end of an entire biome”, and leave hundreds of thousands of hectares of land to be devastated by wildfires, reports the Guardian.
Political proponents say the waterway would reduce costs and time for exporting agricultural commodities, but critics say it would cause irreversible damage to the wetland and its wildlife, reports the Guardian.
Brazil’s Lula government is ramping up action against criminals in the vast Yanomami indigenous reserve — Financial Times
Brazilian officials hope a new test and treatment regiment for malaria will help them eliminate the disease from the country by 2035 — Guardian.
Haiti
Haiti’s interim government is unlikely to meet the February 2026 deadline to inaugurate a duly elected president, reports the Miami Herald. In a meeting with international partners last week interim Prime Minister Garry Conille requested an assessment mission to evaluate gaps in pulling off free and fair elections and stressed the importance of improving security in order for the country to be able to hold elections.
The appeal comes as a Kenyan-led security assistance mission has pushed gangs into rural Haiti in response to “failure to deploy forcefully,” reports the Miami Herald.
“The international effort to reinforce the Haitian police and a transitional government has alleviated conditions in some sections of Port-au-Prince, experts say, but gang members have refocused their attacks on the outskirts, marauding towns that had escaped their campaign of killings, kidnappings and rape,” reports the New York Times.
Ecuador
Inmates in Ecuador’s prisons were allowed family visits for the first time in months, since President Daniel Noboa declared internal armed conflict in his response to criminal gangs. There have been accusations of torture and human rights violations in the military-controlled penitentiaries, reports El País.
Regional
Much has been written about the intersection of Silicon Valley technomancers and politics in the United States,” but “the massive and growing influence of “futurists” on Latin America has gone far less noticed— as has their increasing influence on, and affection for, autocratic right-wing leaders in the region,” writes Joshua Collins in Pirate Wire Services.
“The pending extradition of yet another alleged key player in Sebatian Marset’s money laundering schemes marks his latest setback, as the drug trafficker’s network appears to unravel,” reports InSight Crime.
El Salvador
In a private cocktail held at the start of his second mandate, for close allies, national and international, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele defended the legality of his reelection and his international legitimacy. He celebrated the ongoing state of exception that suspends constitutional guarantees in order to crackdown on gangs, and said there are mothers who turn in their own children to authorities. (El Faro)
Last month Bukele announced a series of economic measures, as Salvadorans are increasingly concerned with food inflation. “The first phase of the Economic Plan, which deals with food and nutrition, includes the creation of 30 agromercados, or “farmer’s markets”, as he has called them in English on social media,” reports El Faro.
Argentina
Gender violence allegations against former Argentine President Alberto Fernández will likely boost current President Javier Milei’s popularity and further shield him from the political costs of his austerity campaign, reports Bloomberg.
Marcelo García compares Milei’s government to that of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who last week faced intense protests in which 21 people were killed. Milei’s scheme to attract investment “places Argentina closer to a category that experts call an enclave economy, one in which some sectors boom but the larger public is not necessarily attached to the benefits,” explains García. (Buenos Aires Times)
Peru
Peru’s government enacted a law that prevents the prosecution of crimes against humanity committed before 2002. The move favors former President Alberto Fujimori, who has been convicted of human rights crimes in the past and currently faces a trial in which prosecutors seek to sentence him to 25 years in the murder of six peasants in 1992. President Dina Boluarte promulgated the bill despite a July order from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that told Peruvian officials that the bill contravened international law. (Associated Press)