Two people killed after El Salvador political rally (Feb. 1, 2021)

 Two people were killed and three were gravely wounded in a shooting attack against a group of FMLN party sympathizers in El Salvador, yesterday. Gunmen attacked the group who had left a rally for San Salvador mayoral candidate Rogelio Canales, ahead of local and legislative elections to be held Feb. 28. It is one of the worst political attacks in the country in decades, reports AFP.

President Nayib Bukele immediately accused the FMLN party of politicizing the attack, and insinuated the party might have organized a self-attack in hopes of electoral payoff. His reaction stunned opposition leaders, who accused the president of fomenting a climate of intolerance, hatred and political fanaticism, reports El Faro.

"Despite the gravity of the president's reaction, it was not surprising," according to an El Faro editorial. "It is the continuation of the rhetoric this president chose starting with his swearing in: one of insults, of disqualifications, of lies, of attacks against his political adversaries."

Bukele has been publicly denigrating the 1992 Peace Accords, which ended the country's bloody civil war, since December. (See last Wednesday's briefs, and Óscar Martínez's recent New York Times Español op-ed. 

"One of the major achievements of those accords had been the virtual elimination of political violence in El Salvador for the past two decades," notes Tim Muth at El Salvador Perspectives. "El Salvador now faces peril that the abusive attack language used by the president and his allies on social media may be inciting a kind of violence many prayed would not be seen again."

Three people were detained in relation to the attack, last night. Two are police agents assigned to protect El Salvador's health minister, and the third is a private security officer who also carried out tasks in the health ministry, reports El Faro.

More El Salvador

• Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has temporarily suspended its operations in El Salvador after one of its teams came under attack from an armed gang, reports Reuters.

News Briefs

Regional Relations

• El Faro reports that the new U.S. Biden administration has broken a tacit agreement that governed relations between the preceding Trump administration and Central American governments: silence regarding corruption and power abuses in exchange for collaboration with the White House's brutal anti-immigration policies. Juan González, Senior Director for the Western Hemisphere at the National Security Council, told El Faro that fighting corruption will be a major focus for the new administration towards Central America.

• Easier said than done, warns Charles T. Call at the Brookings Institute blog: "The Biden administration has emphasized the rule of law and corruption, but it will need to use serious carrots and sticks and prioritize these efforts over others if the $4 billion package from the U.S. is to have a significant effect on average people. Poor governance is what underlies violence, impunity, insecurity, and lack of economic investment. And all the region’s governments either abet or embody corruption."

• U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to approach Latin America with expertise, having led the former Obama administration's work in the region as vice president. But things have changed—some dramatically—since Biden left the White House in January of 2017, warns Dinorah Azpuru at Global Americans. The Trump years eroded the region's trust in the U.S. government, while trust in the Chinese government has increased, according to the AmericasBarometer Survey.

• Biden revoked a rule banning U.S. aid to groups that offer abortions or abortion counseling, even if those services are not financed by U.S. tax dollars. Known as the Global Gag Rule, the ban is reinstated by Republican presidents and revoked by Democratic ones, though former President Donald Trump greatly expanded the rule's scope, effectively denying aid to groups that provided a range of other health services, including H.I.V. medicine and tuberculosis treatment, reports the New York Times.

• A group of former U.S. climate leaders is pushing the new Biden administration to take substantive action to help Amazon rainforest conservation. The heart of the proposal involves making the avoidance of deforestation central to trade agreements and closing loopholes in laws meant to deter forest crimes abroad. They also called on Biden to call a White House summit to press corporate leaders to help finance at least one billion tons of greenhouse gas reductions in the Amazon by 2025. And to expand “debt-for-nature” swaps and to negotiate such agreements with governments in the Amazon region, reports the New York Times.

Migration

• Two and a half years after the U.S. ordered an end to family separations, immigration attorneys and advocates are growing increasingly concerned about re-separations, reports the Washington Post. The policy of taking children from their parents at the border provoked global outrage, but far less attention has been paid to those families — or their legal cases — afterward.

• Last week a group of U.S. Senators introduced a bill to designate Venezuela for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which would grant temporary legal status to Venezuelans fleeing a devastating political and humanitarian crisis in their home country. This Senate legislation is the third of its kind; after the House of Representatives passed a similar TPS bill in July 2019 with a bipartisan majority, the Senate version of the bill was repeatedly blocked in 2019 and 2020, explains WOLA, which supports the effort along with other prominent human rights organizations.

• Many countries around the world have excluded refugees from their coronavirus vaccination plans, potentially undermining their own struggles to contain Covid-19. In December, Colombia said it would not provide vaccines to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants and refugees when its rollout began, reports the Washington Post.

Venezuela

• Newly filed lobbying records show Venezuela’s Maduro government previously hired a longtime Democratic Party donor for $6 million at the same time it was lobbying to discourage the U.S. from imposing sanctions on the oil-rich nation, reports the Associated Press.

Mexico

• Covid-19 treatment has come at a by brutal economic price for many Mexican families, who have been left in debt or bankrupt by the exorbitant cost of medical care for patients with the virus, reports the Guardian.

• Mexican opposition parties have survived in the age of López Obrador, but seem to have renounced fighting for votes through proposals and innovation, argues Viri Rios in the New York Times Español.

Brazil

• Brazilian rapper MC Fioti has become an unexpected vaccine champion with a viral hit celebrating Covid inoculation and boasting a music video shot at one of Brazil’s top biomedical research centers, reports the Guardian.

Literary Corner

• Leonardo Padura on Cuba's U.S. dependence and belonging. (Infobae)

Futbol

• The Copa Libertadores final Saturday, won by Palmeiras in Rio de Janeiro's Maracanã stadium, showcased the sport's "new normal", according to the New York Times' Rory Smith. "Over the last 10 months, it has become clear that — no matter the risk or the restrictions — if soccer is played, for the moments that mean the most, then fans will feel an urge to be together."

Did I miss something, get something wrong, or do you have a different take? Let me know ... 

Latin America Daily Briefing