The Latin American Report # 102

Ecuador

Life has not changed much here after the victory of 35-year-old Daniel Noboa in the second round, with organized crime mercilessly biting away at the remnants of citizen peace there (an Ecuadorian is killed every nearly 70 minutes). In a town in the violent and coastal state of Guayas, forced by drug-trafficking to serve as a bridge to transport hundreds of tons of drugs to Europe, a dozen deaths were reported after gun attacks over the weekend (in one of the reported fatalities, three women were wounded, also related to drug trafficking).

When people want to rest and have fun, crime, which never sleeps, also comes out to do the same. To understand the anomic character of a good part of Ecuadorian society, it is enough to mention that the victims of the most violent event of the weekend were consuming drugs at the time they were attacked by eight people. The target was reportedly a member of a criminal group; the assassins killed the six who accompanied him just for being "in the wrong place". The local mayor denounced the neglect of the authorities, demanding more resources to guarantee peace in the area, with multiple assassinations also occurring in August and September.

Brazil

Twelve individuals were arrested in Rio de Janeiro for setting fire to at least 35 buses and a train in a show of force on behalf of their militia, a kind of illegal band composed by former police officers, who exercise this function without any legal recognition in certain areas of the city thriving by extorting money from the people. When these organizations were formed, they did so in the light of the laudable objective of defending poor neighborhoods from criminal gangs, but they ended up hanging the same label to the detriment of the people they claimed to protect.

The trigger for this recent violence appears to have been the death of a leader of the referred militia—who also happened to be the nephew of the supreme leader of these forces—in heavy combat with the Military Police, who are decisively attacking these para-police groups and also drug gangs. As we see in Colombia, there is a battle between the different illegal armed groups, while the State tries to take them out of the equation that defines popular security. "The fight will be hard, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but evil will not defeat good. We will not rest until we stop them and everyone around them," said the Rio Governor.

Mexico

It is not that there is no life or joy in Latin America, but I am very interested in reflecting on all that is missing for the region to be synonymous with sound, balanced prosperity, and peace. I usually comment also on economic and financial news in a positive key, but I would feel indebted to the twenty Mexicans who lost their lives in the last hours—a product of the violence without rate that strikes that country—if I don't refer here to the denunciation represented by their corpses scattered by the sacred land of Miguel Hidalgo, if I don't focus on the failure of successive governments and in general of a whole system to guarantee the main right of the human being, which is the right to life itself. A dozen officials and police officers were killed after being victims of an ambush in the southern state of Guerrero. Below you can first see the brutal manner in which some of them were forced to die, and right after that I share a segment from a Spanish-language television program that contains other powerful images of the deadly attack they suffered. In the neighboring state of Michoacán, five people lost their lives, including a policeman, in an attack on a relative of the mayor of Tacámbaro, while in Puebla another six people were caught in a crossfire between drug traffickers. Mexico's bleeding.

Venezuela

A second flight arrived in the capital with 111 citizens of the country who were in irregular migratory status in the United States. This complies with an agreement reached between Washington and Caracas which, in my opinion, is an undeclared part of easing the U.S. sanctions against the Venezuelan oil industry. Perhaps, this point is more key than the one officially declared as justification for this measure: the guarantee offered by Chavismo that general elections with international oversight will be held in the second half of 2024.

In this sense, the commission in charge of organizing the opposition primaries, which took place the past Sunday, published a second bulletin where the candidate María Corina Machado appears again as the clear winner. The process has been criticized by the opposition itself and naturally also by the Government, but I was especially interested to see the defense made by EFE of it and in particular the vindication of Machado's figure. Washington has reiterated the ultimatum for her to be reinstated, which the Miraflores Palace firmly refuses to do.

Your quick regional roundup

• Several popular sectors continue protesting in the Panamanian capital the subscription of a contract between the Government and a Canadian company for the latter to exploit in open-pit the largest copper mine in Central America, from which 300,000 tons of concentrate of the red metal will be extracted every year since 2019. The people do not want to know about the returns that the Panamanian State would obtain, set at an annual minimum of 375 million years, but are mobilized because they understand that the contract is unconstitutional and also because they project a very negative environmental impact as a result of the mining activity. Protests include blockades of highways and avenues and the calling of work stoppages by unions such as the teachers' union. Tear gas is reportedly being used to suppress protesters.
  

• China is still trying to expand its slice of the Latin American pie, and has found two good allies in Colombian President Gustavo Petro and his Nicaraguan counterpart Daniel Ortega. The former is in Beijing to discuss the possibility of receiving a vital injection of Asian capital for major infrastructure projects he has planned for his country, such as the construction of the Colombian railway network and the Bogota subway. For its part, Nicaragua announced five infrastructure projects with fresh Chinese credit in strategic sectors such as energy and airports. Two months ago, both countries adopted a Free Trade Agreement aimed at boosting bilateral trade.
  

• Both Javier Milei and Sergio Massa have started their proselytizing work to attract Patricia Bullrich's electorate, which could be decisive in the second round of elections. But in the case of the "ultra" candidate, we have that he has gone even further, to the point of suggesting that Bullrich could accompany him in a tentative government forged in alliances. It is liberal democracy in full swing: 48 hours ago Milei was asking for Bullrich's life with great sincerity, but as he now needs to appeal to her base, he changes his clothes with a snap of his fingers and accepts her. Massa, on the other hand, intends to make money with his invitation to Pope Francis to go to Argentina.
  

And this is all for our one-hundred-second report. I have referenced the sources dynamically in the text, and remember you can learn how and where to follow the LATAM trail news by reading my work here. Have a nice day.