Aid insufficient in Haiti (Aug. 23, 2021)

The death toll from the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti on Aug. 14 has risen past 2,200. Government officials said yesterday that more than 12,000 people were injured, more than 100,000 homes were destroyed or damaged and about 30,000 families were left homeless.

Aid efforts are increasingly impacted by violence, gangs have blocked roads, hijacked aid trucks and stolen supplies, forcing relief workers to transport supplies by helicopter. Desperate survivors are sometimes fighting over scarce handouts. 

Yesterday a prominent gang leader Jimmy Cherizier, alias “Barbecue,” offered the assistance of his group, the G9 Revolutionary Forces. Experts say, however, that it's unclear what impact his truce might have on the ground.

An initial gang truce aimed at permitting aid to reach earthquake victims broke down last week, when two surgeons working with survivors were kidnapped in Port-au-Prince.

 (New York Times, Al Jazeera, Associated Press)

The earthquake has robbed Haiti’s south of the infrastructure it so desperately needs: schools, hospitals and churches. The quake damaged power plants, bridges and roads, compromising electric grids and transit. The water supplies for countless communities are contaminated, in some because of corpses upstream, reports the Washington Post.

Haiti's political crisis, together with previous misuse of aid funds, will likely affect international philanthropic aid directed toward the country in the wake of the recent earthquake, reports the New York Times.

Efforts to assist Haiti should be channelled through the country's grass-roots networks that are in direct contact with the victims and have a record of coordinating relief efforts, argues Michèle Montas in a New York Times opinion piece.

"A vicious cycle is about to reignite, the features of which are already predictable: Plans for reconstruction without consultation with those most affected, camps for displaced people, disaster capitalism," writes Myriam Chancy at NPR.

Too often, natural calamities in Haiti are accompanied by political crises. "In the aftermath of natural disasters, funds pour into the country for recovery efforts, leading to greater political avarice and instability. And the merciless political aftershocks make it impossible to restore a nation on its knees or build resistance to further disasters," writes Francesca Momplaisir in the Washington Post.

The earthquake caught Haiti in a leadership vacuum, and there has not been a concerted state relief effort. Prominent Haitian politicians have tried to fill the gap, reports the New York Times, flying out the injured on their private planes, delivering medical supplies and food and even handing out cash. Their efforts have effectively become the start of campaigns for some of Haiti’s presidential and congressional hopefuls.

More Haiti

• Haitian officials are examining whether President Jovenel Moïse’s killing in July was tied to the drug trade. The commander in charge of guarding Moïse's home, Dimitri Hérard, was a suspect in a major trafficking case, reports the New York Times.
• In the days before Moïse was shot dead in a murky international plot last month, he was telling friends that enemies were out to get him, reports Reuters. Conversations with more than a dozen officials, politicians, diplomats and relatives of Moïse "painted the 53-year-old president as a man increasingly isolated and in peril toward the end of his life."
  

News Briefs

Bolivia

• Jailed former Bolivian President Jeanine Áñez is in “stable” condition after she tried to take her own life, a day after prosecutors charged her with “genocide” over the deaths of protesters in 2019. (Al Jazeera)

Cuba

• A lack of medical supplies is crippling Cuba's medical response to Covid-19, as the country grapples with a one of the western hemisphere’s highest coronavirus rates, reports the Guardian. In the face of extreme scarcity, doctors are increasingly prescribing herbal remedies. Rollout of Cuba's nationally developed coronavirus vaccines has been slowed down by U.S. sanctions – supercharged by Trump, left in place by Biden.
  

Migration

• Seven months into U.S. President Joe Biden’s term, the administration is considering reinstating Remain in Mexico and is ramping up Title 42 border expulsions, reports El Faro English in a review of the Biden administration's migrant policies.
  

Brazil

• Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has hit the highest annual level in a decade, according to data released by Imazon, a Brazilian research institute. Between August 2020 and July 2021, the rainforest lost 10,476 square kilometers, reports the Guardian.

• Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro reportedly said he regretted granting the country's central bank autonomy earlier this year, as surging inflation impacts his reelection prospects, according to the Associated Press.

Peru

• Peruvian President Pedro Castillo tapped career diplomat Oscar Maurtua to head his foreign ministry, after a scandal forced his first pick to resign last week. Maurtua already served as foreign minister in the early 2000s under centrist President Alejandro Toledo, and will likely strengthen Castillo's cabinet ahead of a confirmation vote from the opposition-led Congress. (Reuters)

• The move has spurred discontent within Castillo’s socialist Peru Libre party, according to Bloomberg.

El Salvador

• Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's continual assault on the judicial system and the independence of other branches of the government which could act as a check on a president’s powers undermine the credibility of positive proposals included in Bukele's draft constitutional reform, writes Tim Muth at El Salvador Perspectives. "Despite the fact that some of the changes might be ones which could be individually supported, civil society groups are condemning the Ad Hoc Group and the process surrounding this draft of the Constitution."
  

Chile

• Chilean senate president Yasna Provoste will be the center-left Unidad Constituyente coalition presidential candidate in the November election, after winning a citizen consultation on Saturday. (Telesur)

Argentina

• Argentina's major political coalitions -- the ruling Frente de Todos and the opposition Juntos por el Cambio -- are remarkably stable, despite the country's history of instability, writes María Esperanza Casullo in Americas Quarterly.

• Carpinchos (capybaras) have invaded an affluent gated community in Buenos Aires' suburbs, sparking a surge of support for the rodents among progressive peronists who say the animals are at the vanguard of class struggle. But beyond the internet memes, the case has sparked a broader debate over the situation of the Paraná river wetlands, and how environmental degradation builds on inequality, reports the Guardian. 

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Latin America Daily Briefing

Afghanistan seen from LatAm (Aug. 20, 2021)

Regional Relations

• "To many in Latin America’s diplomatic and foreign-policy communities, the dark events in Afghanistan confirmed the importance of the principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs," writes Catherine Osbourne in today's Latin America Brief. "Many Latin Americans stressed that methods other than military interventions should be used to work toward human rights, even as they acknowledged how challenging it can be to make progress."

• Several countries in the region signed a joint declaration with the European Union and the United States, calling on “those who occupy positions of power and authority throughout Afghanistan to guarantee” the protection of women and girls.

• Chile, Costa Rica and Mexico volunteered to accept some Afghan refugees, with priority for women, girls and human rights activists, reports Deutsche Welle.

• And James Bosworth analyzes the U.S. role in Afghanistan and asks "whether the tolerance for corrupt oligarchs in Latin America and the Caribbean simply allows them to profit off a mirage of governance that could tumble if given the right push," and analyzes whether Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández is the equivalent of Afghanistan's deposed President Ghani. (Latin America Risk Report) 

• For Jonathan Katz, Afghanistan and Haiti share a root cause of crisis: decades of direct U.S. control. "The longest continuous U.S. military occupation, until the record was surpassed in Afghanistan last year, had been in Haiti, which unlike other places the U.S. invaded and held for longer, was never formally colonized," he writes in The New Republic.

Haiti

• Many small Haitian communities affected by last weekend's earthquake have given up hope that the government will come to their assistance, reports the Miami Herald. "Many people in the isolated villages say it’s as if they’ve been forgotten." (See yesterday's post.)

• The crisis in Haiti has invited a lot of reflexion on how international aid fails to achieve its goals. (See yesterday's post.) Vox reports on how Haiti's current political crisis will make recovery from last weekend's earthquake more difficult. "Successful rebuilding requires a strong rule of law. Without it, there is nothing to hold both Haitian officials and nongovernmental organizations accountable."

Mexico

• Radio journalist Jacinto Romero Flores was shot and killed in Mexico's Veracruz state yesterday. (Associated Press)
  

Migration

• Hundreds of migrants, including children and babies, from Central America have been expelled further south by U.S. and Mexican officials, first by plane and then onward in buses towards El Ceibo. Many are not told where they are going, reports Reuters.
  

Cuba

• Aviva Chomsky pushes back against a slew of denunciations against "Leftist" tolerance in response to Cuba's repressed protests. "While we oppose the Cuban government’s crackdown on the protesters, we also believe that the Cuban government’s paranoia that sees the malevolent hand of the United States in every challenge to its policies is not really that far-fetched." (The Nation)

• Delta is ravaging Cuba, overwhelming its lauded health system, as well as the country's mortuaries and crematories, reports the New York Times.

Venezuela

• Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro named Felix Pasencia to head the country's foreign ministry, while the outgoing minister, Jorge Arreaza, will take over the industry and production ministry, in a cabinet shake-up that comes amid negotiations with the opposition meant to ease the country’s political deadlock, reports Al Jazeera.

Argentina

• Argentine President Alberto Fernández expanded his complaint about the illegal shipment of war material to Bolivia's interim government in 2019, after the ouster of then president Evo Morales, by former president Mauricio Macri. (Telesur)

• Argentina’s economy expanded more than expected in June as the government relaxed lockdown measures and ended an export dispute with beef producers, reports Bloomberg.
  

Caribbean

• A lack of coordinated policy and over-reliance on a one-size-fits-all trade structure have long hindered the development of the maritime transport infrastructure that Caribbean small island developing states need. The region’s current infrastructure, which carries more than 90 percent of its goods, is vulnerable to disruptions and inefficiencies, writes Ryan Sullivan at the Aula Blog.
  

Transnational Crime

• "Seizures of coltan in Colombia have shown the complex networks used by armed groups to smuggle the valuable mineral from illegal mines across the border in Venezuela," reports InSight Crime.

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Haiti's aid troubles (Aug. 19, 2021)

The 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti on Saturday has, perversely, provided a respite for Haiti's tenuously positioned caretaker government, according to Foreign Policy. The tragedy has provided distraction from the country's acute political crisis, but instead put a harsh spotlight on Haiti's long-term problems. "The earthquake victims, not to mention the rest of the Haitian majority, are left basically on their own. Haitian communities have an incredible capacity for self-reliance—one forged out of necessity in the face of repeated abandonment."

Official efforts to aid victims of a 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck southwest Haiti on Saturday have been patchy and limited. This hasn't surprised local communities, which have little faith in the government, reports the New York Times. Instead people have been forced to manage their own crisis, reports the Washington Post.

Nonetheless, tensions over lack of assistance are growing, reports the Associated Press. Haitian authorities said at least 600,000 people were in need of humanitarian assistance and 135,000 families displaced, reports Reuters.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry said his administration will try not to “repeat history on the mismanagement and coordination of aid,” a reference to the chaos after the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake, when the government and international partners struggled to channel help to the needy amid the widespread destruction and misery.

The government said this week that it would centralize all aid delivery in Port-au-Prince through a new organization, The National Center for Emergency Operations. By yesterday, however, it was unclear if the new agency was receiving or coordinating any supplies.

Humanitarian groups are adamant that immediate and long-term help must be implemented differently this time, compared with the aftermath of a devastating 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew in 2016, reports the Miami Herald. "Many in the humanitarian sector say they are committed to improving coordination across an array of non-governmental organizations to meet" victims' needs.

Activists have urged the public to avoid large international organizations, and instead donate and provide resources to local organizations and groups directly connected to people in the country rather than give to large, disconnected organizations, reports NBC.

Haitians were marginalized in 2010, and many emergency interventions caused long-term harm in Haiti. "We again have the chance to create sustainable improvements by maximizing Haitians’ role in all aspects of disaster response," argue Brian Concannon and Kathleen Bergin in The Hill. "The arrival of foreign funding and expertise, and the work on the ground, will provide ample opportunities for Haitians to build capacity to sustainably provide healthcare, housing and other basic services that Haiti needs.

"We need a truly Haitian Solution, once and for all… Haitians have the capacity and expertise, even if Haiti doesn’t have enough financial resources to address the multiple crises," said the Haitian Studies Association in a statement. (Repeating Islands)

"Democratic institutions are vital for strengthening Haiti’s ability to respond to crises," argue Sophonie Milande Joseph and François Pierre-Lois at In These Times. Haiti's political crisis is a result of the undermining of the country's democracy by domestic elites and foreign meddling, they write.

In a similar vein, Jonathan Katz rejects narratives that call Haiti "unlucky": "Haitians’ constant suffering is the result of very intentional decisions (about who gets money, who avoids accountability, and construction codes, among other things) made in foreign capitals and Port-au-Prince—not random chance."

The international community must assist with Haiti's political crisis, but not interfere, writes Harvard lecturer Christopher Rhodes in Al Jazeera. "The country’s long-term political stability depends on outside forces taking a back seat to a Haitian-driven rebuilding process. ... American involvement in the political transition should now concentrate on creating a broad and inclusive process that favours not only elections but also true representation for Haitians and their interests.

News Briefs

Regional

• Protests re-emerged last year in Latin America after an initial period of pandemic hibernation. "The mobilizations do not, however, have a single directionality, nor a single point of arrival. And they once again highlight the tensions between inequalities and democracy," writes María Victoria Murillo in Nueva Sociedad.

Nicaragua

• International opposition has had little effect so far on President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo -- the upcoming November presidential elections in Nicaragua are likely to be a farce. Christine Wade argues that the government's current crackdown against opponents responds to the ruling party's low tolerance for dissent and the FSLN's deeply ingrained siege mentality. -- Global Americans
  

Brazil

• Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro threatened to seek the impeachment of two Supreme Court justices: Judge Luís Roberto Barroso, who heads the electoral tribunal and has pushed back against Bolsonaro’s allegations that Brazil’s electronic voting system is vulnerable to fraud, and Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who heads several investigations involving Bolsonaro. (Brazil Report)

• U.S. right-wing ideologue Steve Bannon has backed Bolsonaro's unsubstantiated allegations of potential electoral fraud. Analysts say Bannon's words support the theory that Bolsonaro is preparing to challenge a potential electoral loss in next year's presidential vote. (The New Republic, Business Insider)

• Bolsonaro, is blocking social media followers who criticize him, violating their rights of freedom of speech and access to information, Human Rights Watch said yesterday. (Reuters)

• Brazilian prosecutors asked a bankruptcy court to compel miners Vale SA and BHP Group Ltd to fully pay off their Samarco joint venture's $9.47 billion debt, reports Reuters.

• Alexya Salvador, Brazil's first transgender evangelical pastor, is using her position to help LGBTQ+ people, particularly transwomen who are objects of shocking violence in the country, reports the Guardian.

Colombia

• Rural leader Ofénix de Jesús Cocha Taborda was killed in Colombia's Córdoba department, the 108th social leader assassinated in Colombia so far in 2021. (Radio W)

• Colombia extradited two alleged members of the ELN who are accused by a U.S. federal court of drug trafficking. (Reuters)

Argentina

• Thousands of environmental activists demanded Argentina's congress advance on a law protecting the country's wetlands. (Perfíl, Nodal)

Chile

• Fifteen right-wing Constituent Convention delegates in Chile signed a letter recognizing "errors and injustices" in the country's historic treatment of Indigenous peoples. (Nodal)

• The Convention's Ethics Commission agreed to sanction delegates who deny human rights violations committed by the Pinochet dictatorship or in the government response to the 2019 mass protests. (Nodal)

Did I miss something, get something wrong, or do you have a different take? Let me know ... Latin America Daily BriefingLatin America Daily Briefing

Bolivia's interim gov't persecuted opponents -- CIDH report (Aug. 18, 2021)

Bolivia's interim government persecuted opponents with “systematic torture” and “summary executions” by security forces in the tumultuous aftermath of the 2019 ouster of then-president Evo Morales, according to a new report by an expert group commissioned by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

The report was presented yesterday in La Paz in an event attended by the current president, Luís Arce, who apologized to the victims of the interim government. (Europa Press)

At least 37 people were killed in the aftermath of Morales' ouster, according to the report, which unequivocally labels as massacres the killings of 22 people by security forces at Senkata and Sacaba. The report also found that at least some of the killings were summary executions, and found no evidence backing security forces' claims that excessive force was justified by risk of explosion at the Senkata gas plant. (AFP)

The scathing 471-page report is the most comprehensive yet to examine the events surrounding the disputed 2019 presidential vote. While the independent group of experts stops short of saying Morales was ousted by a coup, the report does question the legitimacy of Jeanine Áñez’s ascent to power in 2019, reports the Associated Press.

News Briefs

Peru

• Peruvian foreign minister Héctor Bejar resigned after footage emerged in which he suggested that the Shining Path had received support from the U.S. CIA. The departure is likely to add to political tension in Peru. President Pedro Castillo will need to appoint a new foreign minister before the end of the month, when the opposition-led Congress will vote whether to accept or reject the cabinet, reports Reuters.

Haiti

• Haitian officials raised the confirmed death toll from Saturday’s 7.2 magnitude earthquake to 1,941, with more than 9,900 injured and 30,000 people left homeless. Tropical Depression Grace lashed Haiti with heavy rain yesterday, further complicating rescue efforts and medical assistance. (Guardian)

• The United States Geological Service reported at least 150 mudslides and rockslides near L’Asile following Grace, reports the Miami Herald.

• The sharp increases in the tolls were not unexpected, and pointed to the slow effort to recover victims, reports the New York Times.

• The U.S. Biden administration is no longer calling for elections in Haiti to be held this year as it assesses the political repercussions of the earthquake, reports McClatchy.

Guyana

• ExxonMobil’s huge new Guyana project faces charges of a disregard for safety from experts who claim the company has failed to adequately prepare for possible disaster, according to an investigation by the Guardian and Floodlight. "Experts claim that Exxon in Guyana appears to be taking advantage of an unprepared government ... allowing the company to skirt necessary oversight. Worse, they also believe the company’s safety plans are inadequate and dangerous."
  

Covid-19

• Latin America is pushing forward with Covid-19 vaccinations. As supply problems are slowly overcome, the region's progress "is built on two factors that have gotten little attention: In many countries, people are eager to get vaccinated and largely trust vaccines, more so than in many richer countries," reports the Wall Street Journal.

• Pope Francis has urged people to get vaccinated against Covid-19, describing doing so as “an act of love”. (Guardian)
  

Cuba

• Cuba's vaunted health system is reeling from Covid-19. Cuba has turned to the military to provide oxygen amid a surge of the coronavirus, after the country's main oxygen plant broke down this weekend, reports Reuters.

• This weekend, nearly two dozen young physicians and medical students took to social media to declare "that doctors are not to blame for the collapse of the public health system," pushing back against government assertions that poor service is the issue. Their move was daring in light of the government's recent crackdowns on dissent, reports the New York Times.

• Cuba's government updated laws to criminally process residents who express dissident views on social media. (Cuba Cute)

Nicaragua

• Nicaragua cancelled operating permits for six NGOs from the United States and Europe on Monday, in the midst of ongoing international criticism about the Ortega government's arrest of dozens of critics. (AFP)

• Nicaragua's list of eligible voters lost 750,000 people since the 2017 elections, leading some experts to believe that the government might be seeking to hide abstention in the November presidential election later this year. (Confidencial)

Regional

• Latin America's democratic left should vehemently denounce abuses and violations of human rights in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. Regional leaders often fall back on loosely ideological alliances, but it's time to exit the Cold War trenches, I argue in a New York Times Español guest essay. Such an approach is not only morally correct, but would strengthen efforts to implement multilateral regional diplomacy and support democratic transitions in those countries and weaken failed policies of sanctions and embargo.

Brazil

• "Black Brazilians are increasingly arguing not only that the police are too trigger-happy but also that their violence is sometimes racially motivated," reports the Economist. Eight out of ten Brazilians killed by police are Black. Police killings tripled between 2013 and 2020 and now represent around a third of all homicides in some states, according to data compiled by the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety. 

• Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s disapproval rating rose to the highest level of his term, according to a new  XP/Ipespe poll that showed 54% of Brazilians rate Bolsonaro as “bad or terrible,” up from 52% in July. (Bloomberg) 

• A Brazilian Senate committee leading an inquiry into Bolsonaro's handling of the coronavirus pandemic reconfirmed the suspicion that Bolsonaro used false data to claim that the number of Covid-19 deaths had been “inflated” by governors and mayors, reports EFE.
  

Venezuela

• Negotiations between Venezuela's government and opposition are a matter of life and death for Venezuelans, writes Luz Mely Reyes in the Post Opinión. "Venezuela is not a country formally at war, but it is not a country at peace either. A devastated nation whose inhabitants do everything humanly possible to subsist in the midst of the vulnerability caused by the many dangers that threaten it.

• Freed Venezuelan opposition leader Freddy Guevara said he is willing to participate in incipient political negotiations with Maduro's government, but is still waiting for opposition parties to decide on the issue, reports Reuters. (See Monday's post.)

• "Colombia does not have a seat at the negotiation table and as such is unlikely to play a fundamental role in the negotiation processes. However, it is the country in the region with the most interest in seeing a resolution to the Venezuelan crisis as it will continue to face the greatest economic and social ramifications as a direct neighbor," notes the Colombia Risk Report.

• Venezuelan journalist María Laura Chang notes the paucity of women at the table in negotiations between Venezuela's Maduro government and the opposition -- an absence that belies the positive impact women have had on other negotiations, such as Colombia's peace agreement with the FARC. (Distintas Latitudes)

• "A major Thai asphalt company has been implicated for money laundering in a criminal complaint against a Miami businessman accused of violating U.S. sanctions for doing maintenance work on Venezuela’s fleet of Russian fighter jets," reports the Associated Press.
  

Colombia

• Colombia's mass protests earlier this year have spurred local community organizing, as several groups of demonstrators  have formed popular assemblies to demand change in their communities, reports Nacla.
  

Argentina

• A group of Rohingya people denounced brutal crimes committed by Myanmar security forces in an Argentine appeals court hearing yesterday. The court is considering invoking the principle of "universal jurisdiction" to bring a case against Myanmar's leaders for genocide and crimes against humanity. Six women testified virtually from a Bangladesh refugee camp, in a case that could create an important precedent for future universal jurisdiction cases. (EFE, AFP, TRIAL) 

• Amnesty International notes that "in some cases the exercise of universal jurisdiction is not a faculty, but an obligation under international law," and called the hearing "historic."

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

Haiti's earthquake victims desperate for aid (Aug. 17, 2021)

The official death toll from the 7.2 magnitude that struck Haiti on Saturday rose to 1,419 yesterday, and at least 6,900 were injured. Rescue workers raced to pull people from the rubble in the country's south west as tropical depression Grace descended on the area last night, dumping heavy rain on earthquake destruction. (CNN)

The rollout of aid has been slow, partly reflecting the Haitian government’s own inabilities to oversee and coordinate it, an echo of the problems following the 2010 quake, reports the New York Times. Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry publicly promised to speed up relief efforts, but privately expressed anger at the government's failure to do so.

Humanitarian groups are adamant that immediate and long-term help must be implemented differently this time, compared with the aftermath of a devastating 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew in 2016, reports the Miami Herald. "Many in the humanitarian sector say they are committed to improving coordination across an array of non-governmental organizations to meet" victims' needs.

Conditions were already dire before Grace, which brings the risk of flash floods and landslides. Many people in the area are sleeping outside in the storm, as the earthquake either destroyed their homes or made them unsafe to stay in. The homes of as many as 1.5 million Haitians across the southern peninsula are structurally damaged. 

In the town of Pestel “every house was destroyed, there’s nowhere to live, we need shelters, medical help and especially water. We’ve had nothing for three days and injured victims are starting to die,” Mayor Marie-Helene L’Esperance told a Haitian radio. She said the prospect of heavy rain had “spread fear through residents who had nothing left but to pray.” (Washington Post)

Hospitals in heavily damaged towns were overwhelmed, with patients lying outside because of a lack of space. One doctor in Les Cayes, one of the worst-hit towns, told the Guardian that: “The emergency room is full and the yard is full." 

But the destruction of churches across the southern peninsula may be the biggest blow to longer term support for Haitians in the affected area, reports the New York Times. "For many Haitians, their only source of aid throughout their lives, in the absence of strong government institutions, has been the church."

News Briefs

More Haiti

• Haitian Judge Mathieu Chanlatte, resigned from his position overseeing the investigation into President Jovenel Moïse's assassination in July. He quit Friday, just four days after taking charge of the probe, and two days after one of his court clerks was found dead in a local hospital under circumstances that remain unclear, reports the Miami Herald.

Colombia

• In the aftermath of Colombia's social unrest earlier this year, authorities are carrying out a mass crackdown on Cali's Primera Línea protesters, reports Al Jazeera. At least 178 have been detained. Many face a variety of criminal charges, including “terrorism”, that could leave them behind bars for decades.

Migration

• The U.S. Biden administration appealed a federal judge's order to reinstate the Migrant Protection Protocols, a controversial immigration program that forced tens of thousands of migrants to wait in Mexico for the resolution of their U.S. asylum cases, reports Reuters.

• Mexico has been quietly flying thousands of undocumented migrants from the country's north to its south, part of an effort to expedite their departure and aid the U.S.'s immigration policies, reports Reuters.

• Migrants are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally at an unprecedented rate. They reflect a changed demographic: now Brazilians, Cubans, Haitians and Venezuelans have joined the more traditional populations of Mexican and Central American migrants at the U.S. border, reports the Wall Street Journal.
  

Regional

• Latin Americans are consistently voting against incumbents, pushed not by ideological shifts left or right, but, rather, discontent with government responses to the pandemic and worries about economic downturns, argues Patricio Navia in Americas Quarterly. "People want to punish incumbents and they want new faces that can bring about new hopes."

• Latin America Risk Report delves into extortion in the region, which, along with other kinds of crime, is on the rise this year.

• The capture of a top Anti-Bala gang member in Paraguay threatens to weaken a key criminal alliance in Brazil's southern border state of Rio Grande Do Sul, reports InSight Crime.

Brazil

• Rio de Janeiro has become a cautionary tale on police violence, writes Human Rights Watch's César Muñoz Acebes in the New York Times. "Black Brazilians are almost three times as likely to be killed by the police as white Brazilians are ... Police violence in Brazil is so stark that it was highlighted in a recent United Nations report that urged countries to take steps toward eradicating systemic racism against people of African descent."

Guatemala

• Washington DC has become the capital of Guatemala's judiciary-in-exile, reports El País, which interviews prominent judges and prosecutors forced to leave Guatemala for safety, after threats in response to their anti-corruption work.

El Salvador

• The Salvadoran government published its proposed constitutional reform last week. (See last Thursday's briefs.) Among other proposals, it increases the presidential term to six-years. But "many changes are remarkably progressive," writes Tim Muth at El Salvador Perspectives.

Mexico

• Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has given the country's military prominent -- and diverse -- roles to carry out, from distributing vaccines to building bank offices. (Associated Press)

Suriname

• Astrid Roemer, the Surinamese winner of the Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren, came under fire after showing support for former president Dési Bouterse, who was convicted of murder, reports the Guardian.
  

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

Haiti hit by 7.2 magnitude earthquake (Aug. 16, 2021)

Haiti was hit by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake on Saturday, compounding the country's many woes, that include a deep political crisis, the recent assassination of its president, a food crisis, and widespread gang violence.

The death toll yesterday was nearly 1,300, but could increase as rescue efforts continue. At least 5,700 people were injured. The quake overwhelmed hospitals, flattened buildings and trapped people under rubble in the cities of Les Cayes and Jeremie in the western part of the country’s southern peninsula. Tropical Depression Grace was expected to hit Haiti today or tomorrow with torrential rains, and could cause mudslides, flooding and further devastation. (Washington Post, CBS, Associated Press, New York Times, Associated Press)

Saturday's earthquake was stronger than the one that killed more than 220,000 people in 2010, but it was centered farther from Port-au-Prince, in an area with less population density. Officials and witnesses said the southern and western areas of the country sustained devastating damage. Doctors  said the two main hospitals in Les Cayes and the main hospital in Jeremie had been  overwhelmed.

Yesterday the main airport of the city of Les Cayes was overwhelmed with people trying to evacuate their loved ones to Port-au-Prince, reports the New York Times.

Much of the initial information about the quake came via social media postings and phone because of the security dangers in traveling to the affected area, reports the New York Times.

Aid efforts have also been hindered by violent gangs. An official at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Haiti said a freshly struck deal for a one-week cease-fire with the gangs could open a humanitarian corridor.  Emergency teams and medical supplies were initially being flown into the hardest-hit areas by helicopter and a test land convoy was scheduled for yesterday.

The potential spread of coronavirus in a disaster situation adds a further complication.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced yesterday that it had deployed an urban search-and-rescue team to join the disaster assistance response team mobilized a day earlier.  (Washington Post)

Venezuela talks underway

Representatives of Venezuela's government and political opposition showed eagerness to reach an agreement that could serve as a roadmap out of the country's prolonged crisis. They met on Friday in Mexico City, where they signed a memorandum of understanding for negotiations that will start in three weeks, on Sept 3. (Associated Press, Efecto Cocuyo, Efecto Cocuyo)

Venezuelan opposition leader Freddy Guevara was released from prison yesterday, a month after his arrest. Guevara said he had been in isolation until several days ago and did not have any further details about his release. (Reuters, Efecto Cocuyo)

Some sources report that Guevara may replace Carlos Vecchio, Guaido’s ambassador in the U.S., on the opposition negotiating team. Maduro’s negotiators had objected to Vecchio’s presence on Friday. They demanded he resign his post as ambassador if he continued as a negotiator, a condition the opposition ultimately refused, reports Bloomberg.

News Briefs

Regional Relations

• Nearly 20 United States Democrat lawmakers sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week demanding the U.S. remove sanctions on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro ahead of the Mexico City talks, reports Politico. They also want the U.S. to help the Norwegian-led diplomatic efforts and “[e]ngage in direct dialogue with the Maduro government” along with other Venezuelan politicians.
  
• The ninth Summit of the Americas — initially scheduled for this year — is now set to take place in mid 2022. It will be held in the U.S. for the first time since the inaugural 1994 meeting. (Politico)
  

Nicaragua

• Nicaraguan police raided the offices of the main opposition newspaper La Prensa on Friday. The national police said the raid was part of an investigation into “customs fraud and money laundering”, and the newspaper’s offices remained under police custody. La Prensa suspended its print edition last week because the government withheld newsprint paper, reports the Associated Press.
  
• Police detained one of La Prensa's top editors, Juan Lorenzo Holmann, on Saturday. He was first taken to a Managua jail, allegedly to sign documents, his cousin and journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro said on Twitter. Police later announced that Holmann is being investigated for customs fraud and money laundering, reports AFP. Holmann is the thirty-third detainee in a broad crackdown against government critics in Nicaragua.
• The actions against La Prensa aim to shut down an independent newspaper and impose censorship, writes Chamorro in El Confidencial.

Peru

• Covid-19 orphanhood is a “hidden pandemic”, say researchers -- and Peru has been particularly affected. By the end of April this year, almost 93,000 Peruvian children – more than one in 100 – had lost a parent, according to a study published in the Lancet. (Guardian)
  

Migration

• The Biden administration's "root causes" migration strategy "reflects a more nuanced and clear-eyed understanding of the structural fragility at the heart of migration from Central America," according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Additionally, the root causes strategy differs from past efforts in several important ways. In stark contrast to the previous administration, it places paramount importance on the protection of human rights and the humanity of migrants themselves."

El Salvador

• Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele traveled to Ibiza in August with his family, and close associates, including Erick Vega who is accused in the U.S. of laundering money. (El Diario de Hoy)

Regional

• A new report by the digital rights organization Access Now looks at how foreign companies, mainly from China and Israel, have driven increased demand for surveillance technology in Latin America over the past decade. Practices include offering equipment and software at discounted prices or, sometimes, giving it away for free, reports Rest of World. "Despite the well-documented history of misuse by government and companies, the rapid expansion of surveillance technology has not met much popular resistance in Argentina, Brazil, and Ecuador," which are highlighted in the report.
  

Brazil

• Coronavirus vaccine resistance is limited in Brazil -- despite the best efforts of President Jair Bolsonaro who has promoted skepticism at every turn. The challenge has been obtaining jabs, not convincing Brazilians to get them, reports the Washington Post.

Mexico

• Vineyards are blooming in Mexico's Coahuila state desert, but vintners must make do with increasingly scarce water, reports the Guardian.
  

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Latin America Daily Briefing

Venezuelan talks restart (Aug. 13, 2021)

 Talks between Venezuela's government and the opposition start today in Mexico City -- the fourth time in five years that the opposition has sought a deal with President Nicolás Maduro. The negotiations are being brokered by Norway, which has mediated in past efforts to reach an agreement aimed at restoring democracy and easing Venezuela's acute humanitarian crisis. Representatives are expected to define an agenda and schedule for the dialogue process to begin in earnest in September.

However, this time there will be a greater international presence at the table: Russia will accompany Maduro's camp, while the Netherlands will sit with the opposition. A broader group of about 10 other nations, including the United States, Canada, Britain, Turkey and Bolivia, will be designated as key actors, reports the Washington Post.

Maduro is demanding the “lifting of all sanctions,” which have exacerbated the country’s punishing economic crisis, the “recognition of legitimate and constitutional authorities,” and that the opposition “renounce the violence.” Opposition demands include an electoral schedule, a massive plan to import Covid-19 vaccines and the guarantee of transparent elections, reports the Associated Press.

Maduro emphasized that the government would go to the talks "autonomously and independently and does not submit to blackmail or threats from the United States government." He spoke after the U.S. urged him to make serious efforts toward holding elections if he wants sanctions relief, reports AFP.

Maduro comes to the negotiations with more strength than in previous instances, and his stepping down is no longer a condition for an agreement. A positive outcome might be incremental agreements on access to coronavirus vaccines, the release of political prisoners and a more level playing field for local and regional elections in November, reports the Washington Post.

Talks won't "provide a “big bang” moment that will dislodge chavismo from the presidential palace and immediately restore democracy," warns Maryhen Jiménez Morales in Americas Quarterly. "Instead, demands in Mexico should center around humanitarian and institutional factors that can help build, brick by brick, a new inclusive political system." She suggests looking at how Mexican opposition parties challenged the PRI's 71-year rule. "Democratization takes time, even decades, and that those processes are not linear."

Venezuelans are skeptical of a political resolution: “The polls demonstrate that there is a deep desire for change, but there’s also deep fatigue for two reasons, not only the daily struggle for survival, but also the inability of politicians up until now to make any difference in their daily lives,” Cynthia Arnson, director of the Wilson Center’s Latin American Program, told the Associated Press.

International support for negotiations will be key. "Success in this round of negotiations will require robust and clear backing from international stakeholders, most notably the United States, as well as realistic expectations, write David Smilde, Geoff Ramsey, Keith Mines and Steve Hege in The Hill. They write about the lessons gleaned from the past failed negotiations, and emphasize that "this time around, the negotiations will need clear support from the U.S. and a willingness to follow the opposition negotiators’ desires to use sanctions as a bargaining chip." They also urge that civil society voices form part of the negotiating process.

News Briefs

More Venezuela

• Venezuela’s partial dollarization has allowed for tenuous economic growth, but isn't enough to ensure recovery from years of hyperinflation, the president of business chamber Fedecamaras told Reuters in an interview.

Brazil

• Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre Moraes opened an investigation into right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro for posting documents to social media from a sealed police investigation into the hacking of a federal election court. Moraes ruled that Bolsonaro's posts must immediately be removed from social media and that the police officer leading the inquiry be removed. (Reuters)

• Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon may have surpassed 10,000 square kilometres for the third straight year, continuing an increase since Bolsonaro assumed office in 2019. The area deforested from August to July was 8,793 square kilometres, just below last year’s record, according to daily alerts compiled by the government's National Institute for Space Research’s Deter monitoring system. (Associated Press)

• Brazilian police are cracking down on a longstanding practice: illegal pesticide smuggling in from China, reports InSight Crime.
  

Regional

• The Covid-19 pandemic created an e-commerce boom that "has been stronger in Latin America than in most other regions, presenting profound consequences for traditional informal economies as well as for citizens previously disconnected from formalized economic and financial networks," writes Alexander Borushek at the Aula Blog.

• Colombia urgently needs help with the economic integration of Venezuelan immigrants, write Sergio Guzmán and Ivonne Marmolejo at Global Americans.
  

Migration

• The UN refugee agency has expressed concern about a new US practice of transferring asylum seekers and migrants expelled under public health orders by plane to southern Mexico, reports AFP. (See Wednesday's briefs.)
  

Mexico

• InSight Crime profiles the most important newer criminal actors in Mexico.
  

Peru

• Societal indifference over forced sterilization carried out by Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori's government between 1990-2000 has left thousands of alleged victims waiting a quarter-century for justice and reparations, reports EFE.
  

Argentina

• A photograph of a birthday gathering for Argentina's first lady, held at the president's official residence last July while the country was under strict lockdown, has spurred condemnation and opposition calls to impeach President Alberto Fernández. (Ámbito)

• Fernández called for an "honest debate" on legalizing marijuana in an interview, comparing cannabis to alcohol and tobacco. (Infobae)

Histories

• The 500-year anniversary of the 1521 fall of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, now the site of Mexico City, has spurred new narratives regarding what was, by any account, a global turning point. "Was the 1521 surrender of the great Indigenous empire to the Spanish crown a triumphant conquest, an existential tragedy—or even a genocide?" asks National Geographic, while the Los Angeles Times delves into the revisions and the revisions of the revisions.

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