Bolivian transport workers showed muscle and mobilization capacity during the strike they staged this Friday against the decree through which the recently inaugurated president Rodrigo Paz eliminated the fuel subsidy. According to relevant political actors like former President "Tuto" Quiroga, a candidate in the last elections, the measure will be felt throughout the national supply chain—many merchants joined the protests for this reason. Quiroga has also claimed that during the campaign Paz had promised something else.
The strategic transport union led street blockades in key cities like the capital and Santa Cruz, the most populous and a classic opposition stronghold. For example, EFE reports that the main streets of the historic center of La Paz and other key roads were blocked, even interrupting traffic of private vehicles and cutting the connection with neighboring cities like El Alto.
The government has called the transport workers to a negotiation initiative, showing, apparently, a certain inclination for dialogue. Under the new, non-subsidized prices, the market reflected an 86% increase in gasoline and a 162% increase in diesel. Had it continued under the old scheme, inaugurated by the socialist MAS governments, the fuel subsidy would have represented about 6.5% of GDP, equivalent to 3.5 billion dollars. Other measures, even "good" ones like a salary increase, have been contested as well.
President Claudia Sheinbaum has recently defended fuel shipments to Cuba, heavily criticized by the Mexican right and representatives of Cuban ascendence on Capitol Hill, such as María Elvira Salazar, who strategically chairs the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee in the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee. Mexicans criticize the support line to the Island for the apparent lack of transparency or what it means in monetary terms compared to other items of the Mexican economy, while from Washington it is criticized that Sheinbaum is providing oxygen to Havana. The latter perspective is truly loaded with venom, because what they mean is that as long as the MORENA government, or Venezuela, continue sending some fuel to Havana—although sometimes what arrives at the port is less than needed for a day—, the people here will not be sufficiently angry and frustrated to rise up against the authorities, or the political regime as a whole.
Salazar has a plausible, but debatable point when talking about the Cuban doctors´ contracts.
Ecuadorian police arrested two suspects this Friday for the murder of Mario Pineda, a footballer—former member of the national team—, and his partner, following an armed attack this week upon leaving a butcher shop in the hyper-violent coastal city of Guayaquil; his mother was also injured. In the last four months of the year, four footballers have been shot dead in Ecuador, including Pineda.
The representative eradication of violence was, by far, the main challenge to overcome for any president emerging from the institutional paralysis left by Guillermo Lasso, who dissolved Congress in 2023 using a constitutional mechanism that saved him from ongoing investigations at the cost of leaving office and calling early elections. The main sign of the chaos at that time was the murder, after leaving a campaign event on August 9, 2023, of Fernando Villavicencio, one of the candidates for Carondelet. Noboa, in my opinion, has failed widely in that mission. However, the people ratified him at the helm of the nation this year, although they just harshly reprimanded him at the polls in three referendums and a popular consultation—binding to convene a constituent assembly.
The controversial magistrate of the Brazilian Supreme Court, Alexandre de Moraes, will have to decide whether to allow Bolsonaro to leave prison to undergo urgent surgery for a bilateral inguinal hernia. The medical report was written by four criminal experts with the Federal Police, who warn of "refractoriness to instituted treatments, worsening of sleep and nutrition," and an "increase in intra-abdominal pressure." The conservative leader, who is serving a 27-year sentence, suffered hiccups throughout the examination performed on him last Wednesday, with a frequency of approximately 30 to 40 episodes per minute.
It is said he began suffering from these crises after being stabbed during a campaign activity in 2018. This same Friday, the Supreme Court denied the last appeal associated with the judicial process, in which de Moraes acted as rapporteur. The head of the Palácio do Planalto, Lula da Silva, has announced he will veto a bill approved in the bicameral Congress that would substantially reduce the sentence against Bolsonaro.
Costa Rican authorities reported the arrest of three Colombians sailing the Pacific aboard a boat with 1.2 tons of cocaine and about 230 kilos of marijuana. The Costa Rican National Coast Guard Service had support from a US patrol plane. Meanwhile, in Colombia, the Navy captured two nationals and one Ecuadorian transporting about 3 tons of cocaine—bound to Central America—in a semi-submersible in border waters with the department of Nariño. Yesterday, the Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted new attacks against two vessels in the Eastern Pacific that allegedly were engaged in narco-trafficking operations. Despite pressure in Congress, the Trump administration seems to be even more aggressive these days, although it remains bogged down regarding the outcome it will give to the Venezuelan case.
On Dec. 18, at the direction of @SecWar Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted lethal kinetic strikes on two vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations in international waters. Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known… pic.twitter.com/CcCyOgYRto
— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) December 19, 2025
As had been advanced yesterday, the MERCOSUR bloc will not let 26 years of negotiations with the European Union be lost when it can wait less than a month for the differences over the trade agreement to be resolved, a point where the opposition of France and Italy stands out. The European Commission says it can convince these countries to potentially sign the agreement in Paraguay next January. The main pressures against the deal come from European farmers, who argue that the competition will be unfair due to differences in standards applied to their products compared to those from the Southern Cone.
Two women and a man were found in an advanced state of decomposition floating in Lake Amatitlán, south of Guatemala City. No cause of death had been revealed, but murder is presumed because referred lake is located in the most violent region of the Central American nation. Meanwhile, in Colombia, up to seven dead are counted so far in the northeastern department of Cesar following a drone attack yesterday against a military base attributed to the National Liberation Army (ELN in Spanish), which also left about thirty injured.
Yesterday, finally, after an agreement between liberals and conservatives, the special scrutiny process began to review about 2,800 records from the general elections at the presidential level, of which some 600 have already been processed. At 6:50 PM Honduras time, according to the signal from Canal 11 on YouTube—the official results dissemination website remains blocked from the public—, "Tito" Asfura continues to dominate the count, but his gap with respect to the liberal Salvador Nasralla has been reduced by more than half to approximately 19,600 votes since the special scrutiny began.
Nasralla continues to speak of tricks and poor management during the process—which has certainly been a disaster except for the massive and disciplined popular turnout—, and demands that, at the end of the special scrutiny, the electoral authority must then order a vote-by-vote count of another 8,845 ballot boxes, whose associated records his party has challenged for various irregularities. He claims that in the end, the count should indicate his victory with about 104,000 votes in favor. Asfura was directly backed by US President Donald Trump, who controversially released former President Juan Orlando Hernández—who was serving a severe sentence for drug trafficking—as part of his "support" package. The general elections took place last November 30.
This is all for today’s report.
