Oil spill threatens Peru marine life (Jan. 20, 2022)

 Unusually high waves caused by the eruption of an underwater volcano in Tonga last weekend caused an oil spill at a refinery in Peru that the government qualified as an "ecological disaster" yesterday. The foreign ministry said that the oil spill had harmed animal and plant life in protected zones over a combined area of some 18,000 square kilometers around islands and fishing regions. 

Peruvian authorities say the spill inflicted “serious harm to hundreds of fishermen’s families” and had “put in danger the flora and fauna” in two protected natural areas. Peru has demanded compensation from the Spanish oil giant Repsol which operates the refinery where the spill occurred while a tanker was unloading crude. Peru’s prime minister, Mirtha Vásquez, told journalists that the Pampilla refinery “apparently” did not have a contingency plan for an oil spill. 

Environmental groups have criticized the company’s response, as well as that of the Peruvian authorities. The oil was spreading along Peru’s Pacific coast affecting seabirds, seagulls, terns, sea lions, otters and dolphins, Oceana Peru said in a tweet.

Juan Carlos Riveros, biologist and scientific director in Peru of Oceana said that the species most affected by the spill include guano birds, seagulls, terns, tendrils, sea lions and dolphins.

La Pampilla is Peru's largest refinery and supplies more than half of the local fuel market.

(Reuters, Guardian, Associated Press)

More Peru

• Powerful figures in Peru are using the judicial system to intimidate and silence critical journalists, reports the New York Times. While the trend is regional, it is particularly strong in Peru, where defamation is a criminal offense.
  
  
• The latest poll conducted by Ipsos and El Comercio shows that Pedro Castillo’s approval rating continued to slip at the start of this month. 33 percent of respondents approved of the President in January, while 60 percent disapproved -- Latin America Risk Report.

News Briefs

Barbados

• Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley won a second term in elections yesterday, in which her Barbados Labour party won all 30 seats, up from 29 in 2018. She gained international fame last year with an incendiary speech at COP26, urging leaders to stand up to the challenge of climate change. She also oversaw Barbados' transition to a full republic last year. (Guardian)

Haiti

• The situation in Haiti has reached a crisis point, as gang violence has surged across the country in the wake of President Jovenel Moïse's assassination last July. International observers are raising concerns that February 7 – the date Moïse's term would expire – could bring more violence and further complicate the country’s political transition, reports Al Jazeera.
  

Brazil

• Rio de Janeiro's state government launched a heavily armed police operation in one of Rio's largest favela's, Jacarezinho, the start of what authorities are touting as an effort to wrest back control from the drug gangs and paramilitary mafias in swathes of the city. Other communities will reportedly be occupied in the coming days, but experts are skeptical the approach will be effective, reports the Guardian.
  
  
• Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that reducing poverty and inequality should be prioritized over fiscal discipline. (Reuters)
  

Guatemala

• Taiwan has paid for a lobbying contract to promote Guatemala with U.S. officials, Guatemala's government said this week. The move comes as China's efforts to strengthen its diplomatic foothold in Central America are advancing, notes Reuters.
  

Migration

• Guatemalan authorities said they sent back more than 600 migrants -- mainly from Honduras and Nicaragua -- who entered the country through border posts with Honduras in a U.S.-bound caravan. (Reuters)
  

Ecuador

• Ecuador will ask its citizens to vote in a 2023 consultation to reform its justice system, announced President Guillermo Lasso. Ecuador is in the midst of a surge in violence, and last year Lasso declared a state of emergency that deployed troops to combat crime. Lasso reiterated his criticism of decisions and sentencing by judges which allow immediate freedom for detainees, reports Reuters.
  

Argentina

• Eduardo Levy Yeyati plumbs Argentina's economic history for lessons applicable to its current predicament in Americas Quarterly.
  
  
• Nacla looks at how lithium mining in Argentina threatens local communities.
  

Costa Rica

• José Maria Figueres and Fabricio Alvarado, tied for first place in Costa Rica's presidential race, with Lineth Saborio following close behind, according to a new poll conducted by Opol Consultores. Costa Rica will hold presidential elections on Feb. 6. (Latin America Risk Report)

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

Betancourt announces candidacy (Jan. 19, 2022)

Ingrid Betancourt said she will run for Colombia's presidency in elections later this year, billing herself as a centrist focused on tackling corruption and unemployment. The decision surprised her colleagues in the Coalición Centro Esperanza centrist alliance, reports La Silla Vacía -- her candidacy strengthens the group's bid, but also means there will be a broad primary in which Betancourt will face off against Alejandro Gaviria, a former health minister and university director, and Sergio Fajardo, a mathematician and former governor who has also previously run for president, as well as other pre-candidates.

The former congresswoman was kidnapped by the FARC 20 years ago while campaigning for the same post, and held hostage for over six years by the guerrillas. She came to symbolize both the brutality of Colombia’s long war and the country’s efforts at reconciliation, reports the New York Times. Despite the horrors she endured — at times being deprived of food and chained by the neck — Betancourt supported Colombia’s 2016 peace deal with the FARC, notes the Washington Post.

Betancourt's speech yesterday focused on corruption, violence and injustice, which she said have held Colombians hostage. She presents her candidacy as an alternative to the current right-wing government, and leftist Gustavo Petro who is ahead in polls for this year's vote. (AFP)

But she faces an uphill battle, political risk analyst Sergio Guzmán told the Guardian. "She represents reconciliation" and other issues that were important during previous elections, like the need for Colombia’s government to make peace with armed groups, Guzmán said. But those are not the main issues that voters are concerned with in this election, according to polls.

More Colombia

• Social leader assassinations are common in Colombia -- one is killed, on average, every 60 hours, according to the latest figures. But the killing of 14-year-old environmental activist Breiner David Cucuñame last week, shot dead while on patrol with the Indigenous Guard, an unarmed group which seeks to protect indigenous lands from incursions by the country’s many armed groups, has been particularly shocking, reports the Guardian. (See yesterday's briefs.)
  

News Briefs

Cuba

• The mass trials against July 11 protesters in Cuba continued this week, despite local and international outcries, reports the Miami Herald. At least 45 protesters will be tried this week in Havana and nearby Mayabeque province, according to information verified by the activist group Justicia 11J. (See Monday's post.)
  

Haiti

• Haitian Judge Garry Orelien, who is overseeing the inquiry into President Jovenel Moïse’s July assassination is being removed from the case after failing to meet a legal deadline on bringing formal charges. The move comes amid doubts about Haiti’s ability — or even its desire — to prosecute those responsible for the brazen crime, according to the Miami Herald.

Regional

• Youth movements, women and international cooperation offer rays of hope for Central American democracies, which have generally failed to establish solid public institutions capable of withstanding the demands of increasingly impatient and angry societies, writes Luis Guillermo Solís in Americas Quarterly.
  

Honduras

• MS13 has taken over aspects of the trash recycling sector in Honduras -- a new InSight Crime investigation explores this and the connections between the gang and the highest rungs of Honduran politics and business. It is the first article in a three-part series into how the MS13 grew from humble beginning to become an investment powerhouse, into numerous businesses, both legal and illegal, across the Northern Triangle.

Brazil

• The hyper-fragmentation of the Brazilian party system is unparalleled -- due in part to incentives that lead politicians to prefer to be high-ranking members of small parties rather than low-ranking members of large parties, explains the Brazil Research Initiative.
  

Covid-19

• South American countries are being hammered by the Omicron coronavirus variant, which has left hospitals understaffed due to employee illness, reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• Limited take up of Covid-19 vaccines has been an ongoing issue hampering the response to the pandemic
  across the Eastern Caribbean subregion as elsewhere -- a new UNICEF survey examines vaccine hesitancy in Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago.  

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

Latin America Daily Briefing (Jan. 18, 2022)

News Briefs

Regional

• In an evolving media ecosystem, concentrated ownership persists in Latin America as conglomerates scramble to adapt to the digital age, reports Nacla. "Latin American media moguls have a disproportionate say in the way political debates are framed. This grants them power to influence policy decisions, electoral outcomes, and a wide array of public interest issues."

Migration

• In recent years, at least one out of every 10 kidnapping victims in Mexico has been a migrant trying to reach the United States, a situation that could deteriorate further to the benefit of organized crime groups with the relaunch of the controversial U.S. "Remain in Mexico" policy, reports InSight Crime.
  

Mexico

• Mexican news photographer Margarito Martínez was killed in Tijuana yesterday, the same day press groups announced the death of reporter José Luis Gamboa due to wounds inflicted in an attack last week in Veracruz. The two killings marked a grim start to 2022 in Mexico, which is considered one of the most dangerous places for reporters outside active war zones, reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• Mexican national oil company is acquiring full control of a U.S. refinery in Texas, part of President Andres Manuel López Obrador’s bid for energy self-sufficiency, which has Mexico investing heavily in the state-owned oil company, placing a renewed emphasis on petroleum production and retreating from renewable energy, reports the New York Times.
  
  
• U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will travel to Mexico this week for talks, with the government's planned overhaul of the Mexican electricity market potentially on the agenda, announced AMLO yesterday. (Reuters).

Colombia

• A 14-year-old Indigenous environmental activist, Breiner David Cucuñame López, was assassinated in Colombia's Cauca department. (CNN)
  
  
• Colombia reported the deaths of at least 145 community leaders and rights defenders last year, as fighting by armed gangs fuelled further violence. (BBC)
  

El Salvador

• El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has selectively supported transitional justice efforts when they serve a political purpose to attack his adversaries, reports El Faro English, pointing to the reopening of the case for the 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. (See last Wednesday's briefs.) 
  
  
• The case could be used to cancel the ARENA right-wing party, whose former president Alfredo Cristiani has been named as a potential intellectual author or as accessory after the fact. Bukele has also used the case to accuse the University of Central America (UCA), an often vocal critic of his government, of being soft on perpetrators of human rights abuses -- despite decades of advocacy for victims. (El Faro English)

Barbados

• Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley is expected to comfortably win a snap general election tomorrow. Her Barbados Labour party (BLP), which won all 30 seats in the 2018 election, is running with the slogan: “It’s safer with Mia – stay the course.” (Guardian)

Regional Relations

• The actual chances of Russian military deployment in Venezuela and Cuba are very low, but that doesn't mean that Russia doesn't pose other threats in Latin America, warns the Latin America Risk Report. James Bosworth looks at potential challenges such as cyber-attacks, health attacks (Havana Syndrome) and disinformation campaigns.
  
  
• Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will visit Suriname and Guayana on Thursday and Friday for talks on economic cooperation following recent discoveries of oil and gas by Brazil's two neighbors, reports Reuters.
  
  
• Bolsonaro acknowledged that he met with former interim Bolivian president Jeanine Añez, reports Nodal.
  

Brazil

• Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has a good chance of winning this year's presidential elections in the first round, particularly if he succeeds in cementing an alliance with his onetime opponent Gerardo Alckmin, a center-right former governor of São Paulo, reports the London Review of Books. 
  
  
• Nonetheless, "the current panorama contrasts sharply with the period leading up to Lula’s election in 2002. ... Lula knows that, should he win, his hands will be tied as he tries to halt the destruction unleashed since Dilma’s overthrow. But on education, healthcare, credit, housing, jobs, nutrition and public goods generally ... there is room for improvement," writes Forrest Hylton in the London Review of Books
  
  
• The death of a top Red Command leader near Rio de Janeiro raises questions about the success of coordinated attempts to weaken one of Brazil's most brutal gangs, both materially and psychologically, according to InSight Crime.
  
  
• The work of Brazilian photographer Raphael Alves highlights how the Covid-19 lockdown intensified some of the socioeconomic inequality of Amazonas state. His "Insulae" project reflects on ideological isolation — which goes far beyond the geographical, one that peoples of the Amazon have historically lived with, reports NPR.

Peru

• Leaders of a group of Peruvian communities said in a public hearing that they rejected a government proposal to prevent future blockades affecting the Las Bambas copper mine, reports Reuters.
  

Sport

• Mexico City has quickly become an international destination for skateboarding and an incubator for an impressive roster of athletes as the sport's scene blooms, reports the New York Times.
  

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

Latin America Daily Briefing

Cuba's courts sentence protesters (Jan. 17, 2022)

 Cuban courts have started imposing draconian sentences on anti-government protesters who flooded the streets last July. Prosecutors this week put on trial more than 60 citizens charged with crimes, including sedition, for taking part in demonstrations. Those being prosecuted include at least five minors as young as 16, reports the New York Times. 

The novelty is government pursuit of people who are largely disconnected from politics. The punishments meted out are unusually severe, even in a country where organized dissidents have traditionally faced stiff sentences, reports the Guardian. A local group, Justicia 11J, said more than 700 people were still being detained following July’s protests, with 158 of those accused of or already sentenced for sedition -- many are poor, young men.

The Cuban government's crackdown on protesters comes as it continues to struggle under increased U.S. sanctions and the pandemic's economic costs -- analysts and activists say the sentences are aimed at stamping out further dissent ahead of a bleak economic outlook.

"Cubans who criticize the government risk criminal prosecution," notes Human Rights Watch's new World Report. "They do not benefit from due process guarantees, such as the right to fair and public hearings by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal. In practice, courts are subordinate to the executive branch."

--------------------------------------------------------------

Protesters mark El Salvador's peace accords

About 2,000 people marched against El Salvador's government yesterday and its decision not to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of El Salvador's peace accords, which ended the country's 12-year civil war, in which 75,000 Former guerrilla fighters, army veterans, human rights victims, members of social organizations and feminist groups participated, as well as members of the judiciary who spoke out against the Bukele administration's onslaught against the judicial power's independence. (El Diario de Hoy, EFE)

Last week the National Assembly voted to commemorate victims of the conflict on the day, but there were no official ceremonies. (See last Wednesday's post.)

President Nayib Bukele has called the U.N. backed agreement a "farce," and said most citizens agreed with his decision not to celebrate the "spurious" accords. He claims the accords were ultimately an agreement between political elites, and brought few concrete benefits to Salvadoran citizens. (AFP)

Critics see this as a bid to rewrite the past, reports the Christian Science Monitor. “What they want,” says Celia Medrano, a human rights expert in El Salvador, “is to force people to forget that at one moment in our history, we understood that we have to talk through things” in order to move ahead.

Bukele criticized international leaders who marked the signing, reports Infobae. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres tweeted yesterday that "the @UN is proud to have helped Salvadorans pave the way towards peace, which must be protected and built on every day."

While the country's efforts to live up to the accords' ideals have fallen short, that "does not mean the ideals themselves should not be highlighted and lifted up. In fact, El Salvador three decades later needs to be reminded of those ideals more than ever," argues Tim Muth at El Salvador Perspectives.

More El Salvador

• El Salvador has lost an estimated $10 to 20 million on its Bitcoin investments, a likely disincentive for other countries contemplating crypto investing, according to Coindesk.
  
  
• El Salvador's bitcoin buying spree may boost the country's credit risk if it continues, according to ratings agency Moody's. (Markets Insider)
  

-------------------------------------------------------------

Russia ties Venezuela and Cuba to Ukraine negotiations

A top Russian diplomat floated the possibility of a military deployment to Cuba and Venezuela in reaction to discussions on European security and Ukraine. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said he could “neither confirm nor exclude” the possibility of Russia sending military assets to Latin America if the U.S. and its allies don’t curtail their military activities on Russia’s doorstep, reported the Associated Press last week.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan dismissed the statements about a possible Russian deployment to Cuba and Venezuela as “bluster in the public commentary.” (Associated Press)

Last month Ryabkov compared the current tensions over Ukraine with the 1962 Cuban missile crisis — when the Soviet Union deployed missiles to Cuba and the US imposed a naval blockade of the island, reports the Guardian.

Former Trump administration Venezuela envoy Elliot Abrams agrees that Russia is probably bluffing, but also notes that there might be a symbolic increase in military handlers already present in Cuba and Venezuela, reports Andrés Oppenheimer in the Miami Herald.

News Briefs

Haiti

• Jamaican authorities arrested former Haitian senator John Joël Joseph one of several suspects in Haitian President Jovenel Moïse's assassination who had remained at large, reports the Miami Herald. Haiti and Jamaica do not have an extradition treaty, which will complicate matters in the coming days as to whether Joseph is sent back to Haiti or transferred to the United States, where a parallel probe into the president’s slaying is ongoing.
  
  
• The  Sainte Croix Hospital, a rural 90-bed medical facility south of Haiti’s capital with the only maternity and neonatal wards for miles, was forced to close after a kidnap gang stole its generator, leaving the facility without electricity, reports the Miami Herald.
  

Peru

• Two people have drowned off a beach in northern Peru, after unusually high waves were recorded in several coastal areas following Saturday’s eruption of an underwater volcano in Tonga. (Reuters)
  

Mexico

• A French fashion brand is under fire for a photo shoot involving Indigenous women in southern Mexico, reports the Washington Post.

Regional

• The science that is helping researchers find the ‘disappeared’ in Latin America -- The Conversation
  

Brazil

• Nearly 1 million enslaved Africans arrived at Valongo wharf in Rio de Janeiro at the height of the transatlantic slave trade -- likely more than anywhere else in the world, and twice as many as were trafficked to all of the United States. But few know the site's history, which presents an opportunity for Brazilians to engage in long-avoided reckoning of its history of human bondage, reports the Washington Post.

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

Latin America Daily Briefing

U.S. policies and aid in LAC (Jan. 14, 2022)

News Briefs

Regional Relations

• The U.S. Biden administration has been criticized for lack of interest in Latin America -- but the approach might also signal a more mature engagement with Latin American countries as equals, argue Nicolás Albertoni and Álvaro Caso in Global Americans. In anycase, "the need for Latin American countries to also voice their priorities for engagement with the U.S. should be, by now, evident."
  
  
• Latin America and the Caribbean face a "cornucopia" of difficulties, from the pandemic, to the economy to pent up dissatisfaction with governments. "Responding constructively to the region’s polarization, fragmentation, and economic reversals constitute the Biden administration’s central challenge in the LAC region," according to a new Wilson Center report looking at likely opportunities for engagement in the next year.
  
  
• Despite a sustained bipartisan commitment to focus USAID funding on local organizations, reform has been agonizingly slow. Looking at the example of Haiti, CEPR explores factors that hold localization reform back -- like reliance on a small cadre of largely US-based contractors and USAID understaffing. The report also looks at short-term responses USAID could implement in Haiti, aimed at "increasing USAID’s own capacity to reach local organizations."
  
  
• Also in Global Americans, Greg Weeks argues against sending large amounts of U.S. aid to Central America: "There is a long-standing and pervasive belief among U.S. policy makers that aid can solve structural problems. ... The problem is that we have no evidence that USAID’s spending advances those grand policy objectives in Central America."

Chile

• Chile’s government pushed ahead with contracts to tap more of the world’s biggest lithium reserves, raising harsh criticism from president-elect Gabriel Boric and other opposition groups seeking to halt the bidding process, reports Bloomberg. This week Chile's government awarded extraction contracts worth a total of US$121 million to a local firm and a Chinese company, shunning two of the world's biggest lithium producers, reports AFP.
  

Colombia

• At least 78 human rights defenders were killed in Colombia in 2021, according to the United Nations human rights agency, which said yesterday that more cases were still being verified. (Reuters)
  

Regional

• Millennial(ish) leaders are rejuvenating Latin American politics, but they're also creating uncertainty about the future of the region's political parties, according to the Washington Post's Monkey Cage. Latin America's new generation of leadership emerged from social turmoil spurred by corruption scandals, stagnant growth, and a region wide protest wave. They know how to tap anti-incumbent sentiment, are more willing to cast aside established party labels, and are social-media savvy.
  
  
• Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia are among the 10 countries that had the least media attention in 2021, despite each having at least 1 million people affected by conflict or climate disasters, according to Care International's annual report. (Guardian)

Venezuela

• Former Venezuelan attorney general Luisa Ortega has been implicated in a major corruption case involving a Venezuelan businessman who this week pleaded guilty to paying $1 million in bribes, reports the Associated Press. Ortega went into exile after she dissented from President Nicolás Maduro's authoritarian political strategy. She has provided evidence to the International Criminal Court of human rights abuses allegedly committed by Maduro’s government. Ortega said last year that allegations by Carlos Fermin were prompted by Venezuela’s arrest of Fermin’s brother and were an attempt by Maduro’s government to coerce a confession and tarnish her reputation.
  
  
• The opposition victory last weekend in Venezuela's Barinas state was one of coalition politics rather than voter outrage, writes Francisco Rodríguez in Global Americans. (See Monday's post.) "In contrast to past elections—including that of November—the opposition candidate in Barinas sought out alliances with centrist groups that have emerged as a new force in Venezuelan politics. It was the support of key centrists, rather than increased mobilization, that allowed the opposition to trounce Maduro’s candidate."
  
  
• If you are having a hard time remembering all the twists and turns of Venezuela's caretaker government -- not to mention the years of linguistic gymnastics on how to refer to Juan Guaidó -- the Caracas Chronicles has a timeline that follows "its enthusiastic origins to its murky present."

El Salvador 

• El Salvador's President Nayib "Bukele is dismantling the rule of law, but he is doing it with the enthusiastic backing of the crowds, while the opposition barely manages to rally a few thousand to its protest marches," writes Roberto Valencia in the Post Opinión.

Migration

• "Costa Rica’s congress is weighing a proposal to allow people forcibly displaced by climate change to live and work in the country. If passed, the Central American nation would be at the vanguard of a new interpretation of what it means to be a refugee," reports the Latin America Brief.
  
  
• Two months after U.S. President Joe Biden said migrant families separated at the border under the Trump administration deserve compensation, his administration’s lawyers are arguing in federal court that they are not in fact entitled to financial damages and their cases should be dismissed, reports the Washington Post.
  
  
• In the meantime, reports about payment negotiations have created a new worry for affected migrant families: extortion attempts stemming from the belief that they have received compensation, reports the Associated Press. Some advocates fear prospects of large payments will fuel many more threats.

Brazil

• Brazil’s democratic institutions should protect voting and speech rights leading to the October 2022 presidential elections from any attempt by President Jair Bolsonaro to subvert the electoral system or undermine the rule of law and fundamental freedoms, Human Rights Watch said in it's new World Report 2022.
  
  
• An Associated Press investigation shows that  unauthorized aircraft — and the countless liters of fuel needed to power them and other mining equipment — form the backbone of Brazil's Roraima state illicit mining economy. "Without that network functioning smoothly, law enforcement officials and environmental experts say illegal mining operations would collapse."
  
  
• Cargill is still buying soya and corn from a farm linked to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, despite having pledged to clean up its global supply chains, according to a new report led by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The findings raise questions about Cargill’s due diligence process, reports the Guardian.
  
  
• Brazilian consumers could see more food price increases this year, pushed by a drought the has hurt crops used to feed livestock, reports Reuters.
  
  
• As Brazil works to maintain its dominance of the soybean market, it is facing an ascending challenge: a flood of cheap grains smuggled illegally from Argentina, reports InSight Crime.
  
  
• The Brazilian port of Santos has become a crucial lynchpin for the global cocaine trade, reports InSight Crime.

Mexico

• The U.S. government will prevent Mexican fishing vessels from entering U.S. ports on the Gulf of Mexico, arguing the Mexican government has not done enough to prevent its boats from illegally fishing in U.S. waters. (Associated Press)
  

Argentina

• Last year Argentina's Tierra del Fuego province reportedly became the first region in the world to ban open-net salmon farming, a reflection of the country's growing environmental movement, explains the Wilson Center's Weekly Asado.

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

Latin America Daily Briefing

El Faro extensively hacked (Jan. 13, 2022)

At least twenty-two members of El Faro -- two-thirds of the online newspaper's staff -- were hacked during the past two years using the Israeli spyware Pegasus, according to a technical analysis led by The Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary cybersecurity laboratory at the University of Toronto, in collaboration with Access Now.

“This is one of the most shocking and obsessive cases of targeting that we have investigated,” The Citizen Lab’s senior researcher John Scott-Railton told El Faro.

The phones of the editorial board, reporters, and administrative team were compromised, in some cases for as long as a year. The analysis identified a total of 226 intrusions gaining unfettered access to messages, calls, and all content stored on the devices, reports El Faro. The hacks coincided with the timeline of the newsroom’s most sensitive investigative work during the last two years, major events in El Salvador’s national politics, and peak moments of government attacks against the organization.

"It is hard for me to think or conclude something other than the government of El Salvador" was behind the alleged hacks, El Faro Editor-in-Chief Oscar Martinez told Reuters. "It's evident that there is a radical interest in understanding what El Faro is doing."

In a statement to Reuters, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's communications office said the government of El Salvador was not a client of NSO Group Technologies, the company that developed Pegasus. It said the administration is investigating the alleged hacking and had information that some top administration officials also might have had their phones infiltrated.

NSO, which has long kept its client list confidential, declined to comment on whether El Salvador was a customer. 

The revelation came just months after the American government blacklisted the Israeli firm that produces Pegasus, the NSO Group, in an attempt to curb the largely unregulated global market in spyware, reports the New York Times.

Citizen Lab researchers said they began a forensic analysis of the El Salvador phones in September after being contacted by two journalists there who suspected their devices might be compromised. Researchers said they ultimately found evidence that spyware had been planted on a total of 37 devices belonging to three human-rights groups, six news publications and an independent journalist. (Reuters)

More El Salvador

• A newly named Salvadoran judge authorized the attorney general's office to confiscate electronic equipment from prosecutors and ex prosecutors who investigated Bukele administration officials for corruption. The court order responds to allegations that the prosecutors allegedly revealed information about government negotiations with gangs, reports El Faro.

--------------------------------

Human Rights Watch World Report 2022

Latin America is facing some of its gravest human rights challenges in decades, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing its World Report 2022.

“Latin America is experiencing such an alarming reversal of basic freedoms that we now have to defend democratic spaces that we once took for granted,” said Tamara Taraciuk Broner, Americas acting director at Human Rights Watch. “Even democratically elected leaders attacked independent civil society, the free press, and judicial independence. Millions of people were forced to leave their homes and countries, and the economic and social impact of the pandemic has been devastating.”

The report highlights the Cuban government's systematic abuses against critics and artists; Nicaragua's sham elections last year, and alleged crimes against humanity committed by Venezuelan security forces. But it also looks at how elected leaders with authoritarian tendencies -- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele -- have also repeatedly tried to undermine the rule of law.

News Briefs

Regional

• "Covid-19 has deepened Central America’s socioeconomic crisis, worsening poverty and inequality, putting democracy at even graver risk, and increasing the urgency for socioeconomic, legal, and institutional reforms of the system of privileges and perks for the elites and to establish a more equitable distribution of income and wealth. But the region’s form of capitalism, which has so obviously failed, continues to operate with impunity," writes Alexander Segovia at the Aula Blog.
  
  
• The Catholic Church is losing ground in Latin America, despite leadership from the region's first pope. Catholicism has lost adherents to other faiths in the region, especially Pentecostalism, and more recently to the ranks of the unchurched, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Brazil

• Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva retains a clear lead for this year's presidential election in Brazil: he would get 45 percent of the votes against 23 percent for the country's incumbent, President Jair Bolsonaro if the election were held today, according to a newly published Banco Genial/Quaest Pesquisas poll. (Reuters)
  
  
• Bolsonaro has involved the military in his government to a point unprecedented in Brazil's democracy, appointing active-duty and reserve military officers to important civilian posts in his administration. Hundreds of military and police political candidates have leveraged the Bolsonaro far-right political wave to win office in recent elections. While Bolsonaro's political fortunes have waned, the military "is taking steps to ensure that its newfound power will persist no matter who wins the presidential race," reports The Intercept.
  
  
• Folha de São Paulo reported, last week, that the Brazilian Army has altered its 2022 military exercise schedule, to free up forces during the October election period. According to the report, Army commanders justified the changes on the grounds of “fears” of “incidents of violence during or after the October election.” During this period, they reportedly determined, “the entire force must be available for potential needs.”
  
  
• Three members of a family of turtle breeders in the Brazilian state of Pará were assassinated. Brazil was ranked the fourth-deadliest country for land and environmental defenders in 2020, according to Global Witness. (Guardian)
  
  
• Landslides and flooding caused by torrential rains have killed at least 15 people in Brazil's Minas Gerais state between Sunday and Tuesday. (BBC)

Cuba

• The Central American Bank for Economic Integration said it would give Cuba a loan of 46.7 million euros to ramp up the country's production of nationally developed Covid-19 vaccines for both domestic use and export. (Reuters)

Mexico

• Mexico has refused to close its borders during the Covid-19 pandemic: For a country such as Mexico, which depends on tourism for nearly 9 percent of its gross domestic product and has a massive flow of migrants, workers and students across its nearly 2,000-mile border with the United States, the cost of imposing travel restrictions “is too high compared to the usefulness,” Coronavirus Czar Hugo López-Gatell told the Washington Post.
  
  
• Some Mexican states have started rolling out vaccination mandates for bars and events, reports the Washington Post.

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

Latin America Daily Briefing

Bukele disparages peace accords (Jan. 12, 2022)

El Salvador will commemorate victims of the country's long armed conflict on Jan. 16, the 30th anniversary of history peace accords that ended fighting. The new focus, passed by President Nayib Bukele's allies in the National Assembly, yesterday, is aimed at discrediting the U.N.-backed peace agreement itself, which Bukele has characterized as a "farce." (Deutsche Welle)

News Briefs

More El Salvador 

• El Salvador's Constitutional Chamber ordered the re-opening of an investigation into the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests last week, a path to justice in the emblematic human rights crime. (See last Thursday's briefs.) But leaders at the  the University of Central America (UCA), where the crime was committed, expressed concern about the judicial process being followed, and the potential political exploitation of the case. (El Salvador Perspectives)
  
  
• One of El Salvador's inactive volcanoes will provide enough geothermal energy to power the Bitcoin City project, according to President Nayib Bukele. (Cointelegraph)

Regional

• Coronavirus cases are surging across Latin America, led by Argentina, but high vaccination rates appear to be preventing a more dramatic health crisis, reports the Guardian.
  
  
• Nonetheless, the high rate of contagion will create significant disruptions in coming weeks, according to the Latin America Risk Report.

Haiti

• Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier, a controversial former police officer-turned-gang leader, stands out as a key broker in Haiti's current power struggle, reports InSight Crime in a report from last month. "For some, he's a Robin-Hood figure giving voice and support to those most marginalized and neglected by the national government. For others, he's a former police officer implicated in one of the worst massacres to hit the country, who has since grown into the nation's foremost gang leader."
  

Colombia

• At least 27 people died in fighting between armed Colombian groups on Jan. 2, in Arauca, a rural region in eastern Colombia on the border with Venezuela, reports France 24. The battle was part of a broader escalation of hostilities between Colombia's ELN guerrillas and the dissident 10th Front of the ex-FARC Mafia, reports InSight Crime.
  

Regional Relations

• Colombia’s foreign minister said the country's consul in Haiti has received threats after trying to provide humanitarian assistance to 18 former Colombia soldiers who were arrested last year for allegedly participating in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, reports the Associated Press.
  

Colombia

• Colombian researchers are redoing ornithologist Frank Chapman's legendary bird survey -- a hundred years after the U.S. scientist studied Colombia's feathered populations. But this project will not snatch birds and whisk them to a museum abroad — as Chapman’s team did, reports Nature. Instead specimens will stay in Colombia, and scientists will engage with local communities during their expeditions.
  
  
• In northeastern Colombia, poached baby sloths are sold to tourists as pets -- National Geographic delves into the world of wildlife traffickers in the area.
  

Bolivia

• Growing evidence shows that mercury used for small-scale gold mining in Bolivia is causing illnesses in poor communities, reports the Guardian. The uncontrolled disposal of mercury waste creates toxic flows in Bolivia’s river systems.

Cuba

• The Cuban approach to climate adaptation and mitigation offers an alternative to the globally dominant paradigms based on the private sector or public-private partnerships, according to Jacobin. Cuba's Tarea Vida policy has increasing relevance to tourism-dependent Caribbean small island developing states, and others in the Global South.
  

Argentina

• Argentina is facing a historic heat wave with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius, making the country for a while the hottest place on the planet, reports Reuters.
  

Literary Corner

• Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa is known for his right-wing political stances in the region -- a marked contrast, for many readers, with the rich voice that comes through in his novels. His latest ouvre is no exception, writes Nick Burns in Americas Quarterly. Hard Times, focuses on the U.S. backed coup against Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, which he said "held up the continent’s democratization for decades at the cost of thousands of lives."

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

Latin America Daily Briefing