U.S. warns Maduro to fulfill Barbados Agreement
Jan. 30, 2024
The U.S. Biden administration warned Venezuela’s Maduro government that it has until April to fulfill its commitment to free political prisoners, and to allow all presidential candidates to compete in this year’s elections, or else face the reimposition of oil sanctions.
Already the U.S. reinstated sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned gold mining company, yesterday.
“We have made clear that all who want to run for president should be allowed the opportunity, and are entitled to a level electoral playing field, to freedom of movement, and to assurances for their physical safety,” according to a White House statement.
There has been growing pressure on the Biden administration to react to Venezuela’s failure to live up to its Barbados Agreement commitments which involved lifting bans blocking opposition leaders from running for office, implementing reforms to the electoral system, and free all political prisoners.
The warning comes after Venezuela’s highest court upheld a ban against the candidacy of María Corina Machado, chosen in an opposition primary last year to head a unity platform in elections this year.
Yesterday, Machado called the court ruling blocking her presidential candidacy last week “judicial criminality” and vowed to stay in the race,
Over the weekend, Gerardo Blyde, chief negotiator for Venezuela’s opposition, accused Maduro’s government of a “repressive escalation” ahead of presidential elections this year.
Last week the government announced arrest warrants against critics, including prominent journalists and civil society leaders.
(Miami Herald, ABC, Reuters, CNN, Associated Press, see yesterday’s briefs and last Tuesday’s post.)
Guatemala
Guatemalan attorney general Consuelo Porras abruptly left a cabinet meeting in which she was supposed to defend her work to President Bernardo Arévalo. It is the second time she has avoided a meeting with the leader whose assumption she sought to block for months. Later yesterday she invited Arévalo to a meeting in her office, reports the Associated Press.
Arévalo said Porras refused to comply with her obligations. (EFE)
Porra’s ouster was a key demand of pro-democracy protests in favor of Arévalo last year, and the new president vowed to remove her from office. He said yesterday that he has publicly asked her to resign, reports Soy 502.
El Salvador
A new series by Radio Ambulante, Bukele: El Señor de los Sueños, delves into the history of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele. “The story of an emblematic figure of our era: that of a publicist who became president and managed to convince a society that the only way to solve its problems was to give it unlimited power. How do you get to the point where the promises of democracy no longer matter?”
Regional
Relatively peaceful Ecuador has been a refuge for migrants in recent decades, more than 800,000, including 475,000 Venezuelans and 203,000 Colombians, currently live in the country. The country’s current security crisis “will have key impacts on hemispheric human mobility,” writes Jordi Amaral in the Americas Migration Brief. “These immigrant communities’ livelihoods and integration are threatened by both the direct challenges crime and violence pose and the indirect impacts caused by scapegoating and unsubstantiated public perceptions of generalized criminality.”
An ambitious CARICOM plan to reduce hunger in the Caribbean, which spiked in 2022, with some 4.1 million people—or 57% of the English-speaking Caribbean—reporting food insecurity, aims to lower the region’s food import bill by a quarter in the next two years. (Americas Quarterly)
Colombia
Colombia’s government and the ELN announced they will extend their current ceasefire by one week, while peace negotiations continue in Havana, reports the Associated Press.
“Colombia’s fires this month are unusual in a country where people are more accustomed to torrential rain and mudslides than fire and ash. They have been attributed to high temperatures and drought exacerbated by the climate phenomenon known as El Niño,” reports the New York Times.
Ecuador
Firefighters managed to put out a forest fire that destroyed about 800 hectares of a reserve in Ecuador’s Carchi province, on the border with Colombia. (Associated Press)
Argentina
The Milei administration’s much altered “omnibus” bill of reforms is set for a marathon session, expected to last 30 hours, in Argentina’s lower chamber of Congress tomorrow. (Infobae)
Negotiations between Milei administration officials and friendly opposition parties regarding the extensive raft of reforms the president hoped to push through Congress at top speed have been exceedingly messy. (See yesterday’s briefs.) President Javier Milei ramped up tensions yesterday, retweeting a criticism calling a center-right block of lawmakers the “extortion bloc.” (Infobae)
“Considered a fringe doctrine globally, libertarianism has long been socially acceptable in Latin America — and now it has seized power,” writes Sandra Weiss in IPS, looking at Argentina’s neoliberal turn in a regional context.
Haiti
A Haiti investigative judge has issued an arrest warrant for the widow of former President Jovenel Moïse, Martine Moïse, who has refused to cooperate with the investigation. “The arrest warrant is for failing to appear before the investigative judge. The warrant makes no mention of any potential involvement by Moïse in her husband’s death,” reports the Miami Herald.
Guyana
The AQ Podcast discusses Guyana’s economy and how it is handling the challenges of abundance — whether it can avoid the “resource curse” in a context of newfound oil abundance and climate change — with Jay Mandle.
Peru
“Protesters in Peru are blocking access to Machu Picchu, leaving some tourists stranded amid local anger over a new ticketing system halting rail transport to one of South America’s most popular heritage sites,” reports Reuters.
Critter Corner
“Building an economy around stingless bees, which pollinate much of the Amazon’s native flora, is a creative way to fight deforestation,” reports the New York Times.