Inflation afflicting LatAm (Aug. 31, 2021)

News Briefs

Regional

• Inflation increasing in Latin American countries, pushed by a combination of global factors, including climate change, and local conditions, including political uncertainty, reports El País.

Brazil

• Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro could seek to bolster his sinking popularity with a new round of Covid cash transfers, reports Bloomberg. The temporary assistance would be a stopgap in response to delays in government plans to rebrand and bolster the longstanding Bolsa Familia program, originally launched by former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro's likely opponent in next year's presidential elections.

• Brazilian Indigenous communities organized the largest-ever native protests to block what they described as “a declaration of extermination” from lawmakers representing agribusiness, mining, and logging interests aligned with far-right President Jair Bolsonaro -- The Intercept.

Venezuela

• Venezuela's mail opposition parties are expected to announce candidacies for the November elections for governors and mayors this week. Opposition leaders in Venezuela's provinces have been pushing to abandon the abstentionist strategy -- the parties boycotted elections in 2018 and 2020 due to lack of guarantees -- and have sought a unified platform against Maduro allies, reports Reuters. (See yesterday's post.)
  

Regional Relations

• A broad coalition of 344 organizations called on the U.S. Biden administration to expand relief for Haitian migrants, including halting all deportations to the country, reports The Hill. At least 130 people deported from the U.S. to Haiti since President Jovenel Moïse's assassination in July.

Mexico

• Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) condemned the actions of agents caught on video over the weekend throwing a migrant to the ground and kicking him in the face with the help of National Guard troops, reports Reuters.

• Families' desperate searches for disappeared people in Mexico often run up against bureaucratic inefficiency and even the scorn of prosecutors and uncontrolled impunity, reports EFE. (See Friday's briefs.)

• Hurricane Nora caused floods and landslides along Mexico’s Pacific coast Sunday, while making landfall and passing just inland of the Mazatlan resort area before veering into the Gulf of California and weakening into a tropical storm. (Associated Press)

• The Zetas' criminal organization operating model -- based on brutal tactics to instill fear and extortion of businesses in areas under their physical control -- is destroying Mexico, writes Steven Dudley at InSight Crime.

Guatemala

• A Guatemalan judge ordered two high-ranking ex-generals to stand trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and forced kidnapping from 1978 to 1982 in a case where more than 1,700 people were killed over 31 separate massacres, reports Reuters.

Argentina

• Argentine President Alberto Fernández is battling a political scandal with potential legal repercussions -- ahead of midterm election primaries next month. A prosecutor opened a criminal investigation into a gathering held by Fernández in July 2020, when the country was under strict lockdown. Fernández has offered to donate half his salary for four months as a penalty. (El País)

Indigenous

• An Indigenous guard for tribes living on the Colombia - Ecuador border intervened to save the lives of Covid-19 patients at risk of being killed to contain contagion in the area, reports El País.

Environment

• "Alas, Cantos y Colores," a Colombian field study, will compare tropical birds across the country with a survey taken a hundred years ago, and promises insight into how species have responded to changes in land use and climate, reports the New York Times.

• "If we want global change to take place, we need to build a new language on the level of the planetary emergency. A language that is supported by texts with judicial power, that is, laws," writes Jorge Carrión who writes about the push To typify a new crime against humanity: "ecocide." (New York Times Español)

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

Latin America Daily Briefing