Mexican Senate approves cannabis bill (Nov. 20, 2020)

 Mexico's senate passed a bill yesterday that would make Mexico the third country in the world, after Uruguay and Canada, to legalise cannabis for recreational use nationwide. The bill passed by a landslide 82 votes in favor, and now passes to the Chamber of Deputies. Lawmakers are on a mid-December deadline to create a regulatory framework: The Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that recreational marijuana should be permitted, just one year after lawmakers legalized it for medicinal use.

The bill would let users carry up to 28 grams and grow as many as four plants at home. Sales to adults in authorized businesses would be allowed, provided the product abides by maximum levels of psychoactive ingredients.

Advocates were concerned that the proposals under consideration favors private companies over individual consumers. Clauses maintain criminalization of users, warn activists.

(Reuters, Animal Político, Washington Post)

Advocates have argued that the legalization would dent the black market, in addition to the public health angle. But the move could have risky secondary effects, such as provoking cartel violence and diversification, warns the Economist.

News Briefs

Mexico

• Firearms trafficked from the U.S. to Mexico have given increasingly militarized drug cartels arsenals that rival the weaponry of the country’s security forces. In many cases, criminals outgun police, reports the Washington Post.

• A shadowy military "brotherhood" apparently pressured Mexico's government to play hardball with the U.S. in order to obtain the release of former defense minister Salvador Cienfuegos, who was arrested in Los Angeles last month and accused of collaborating with a drug cartel, reports Infobae. (See yesterday's briefs.)

Peru

• Peruvian President Francisco Sagasti is a 76-year-old technocrat with decades of experience thinking about political problems -- and a demonstrated commitment to defending democratic norms, writes Jo-Marie Burt in Americas Quarterly. He faces an unenviable task: navigating between powerful lawmakers angling to protect themselves from prosecution, and a protest movement angered by systemic graft and recent police repression.

Nicaragua

• Nicaragua's ruling FSLN party is angling to replace Supreme Court judges and electoral tribunal authorities who have been operating well past their constitutional mandates. The move would give the Ortega administration the opportunity to replace the majority of the Supreme Court with amenable judges ahead of elections next year, reports Confidencial.

Brazil

• Nearly 100 major industrial river ports have been built on the Brazilian Amazon’s major rivers over the past two decades, many have been internationally financed and built by commodities companies with little government oversight. These ports have transformed the region, opening it to agribusiness and the export of commodities, especially soy, to China and the rest of the world. However, this boom in port infrastructure often came at the expense of the environment and traditional riverine communities, writes Manuela Andreoni at Mongabay.
  
• Brazilian finance minister Paulo Guedes is stuck trying to figure out how to balance an expensive emergency aid program, growing market concerns, and his mercurial boss, President Jair Bolsonaro -- Thomas Traumann at Americas Quarterly.
  

Ecuador

• Ecuador portrays itself as a victim of illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing by Chinese trawlers near the Galapagos islands. But the country's own fishing industry is just as bad, warn activists -- Economist.
  

Guyana

• Guyana remains a crucial transit point for cocaine headed to the United States and across the Atlantic. InSight Crime looks at Guyana’s decisive role as a transit hub on drug trafficking routes linking Latin America to lucrative markets for cocaine.
  

Argentina

• There have been dozens of reports implicating Argentine police in human rights abuses since the country entered an extended coronavirus quarantine in March -- authorities should move beyond condemnation of such episodes and ensure that transgressors are duly sanctioned, writes Human Rights Watch Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco in El Post. Police repression is at its worst against residents of poorer neighborhoods, and there have also been cases of grave abuses against LGBTQI people under the guise of quarantine enforcement, he notes.

Covid-19

• Covid-19 vaccines that require complex cold-chain infrastructure will be out of reach for two-thirds of the world's population. The next vaccine frontier is delivery mechanisms that don't require refrigeration, or even needles, reports the Guardian.

Conspiracies

• The back issues of a Mexican small-town newspaper, El Sol de Tampico, hold a clue that undermines theories linking JFK's assasination to Cuban spies -- Conversation.

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Latin America Daily Briefing