INTL Latin America and the Islands: Politics, Economics, Military- June 2022

[Plain Jane]

May's thread:

INTL - Latin America and the Islands: Politics, Economics, Military- May 2022

April’s thread: https://www.timebomb2000.com/xf/index.php?threads/latin-america-and-the-islands-politics-economics-military-april-2022.617564/#post-9122463 Main Coronavirus thread beginning page 1554: https://www.timebomb2000.com/xf/index.php?threads/main-coronavirus-thread.566780/page-1554

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Main Coronavirus thread beginning page 1571:

CORONA - Main Coronavirus thread

[CONTINUED FROM POST ABOVE] September 2021 - Scotland launched it’s first investigation into an abnormal spike in newborn baby deaths that was triggered by surpassing a threshold in infant deaths that hadn’t been seen since the 1980’s. (Note- this spike did not occur in 2020, the Year of Covid)...

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Nicaraguan government abolishes 83 more NGOs, civic groups

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on Tuesday ordered the closure of 83 more civic groups and non-governmental organizations.

apnews.com

Nicaraguan government abolishes 83 more NGOs, civic groups

Nicaraguan government abolishes 83 more NGOs, civic groups
today


MEXICO CITY (AP) — The government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on Tuesday ordered the closure of 83 more civic groups and non-governmental organizations.

The move brought to 200 the number of such closures this year, and a total of 320 since protests against the Ortega regime erupted in 2018.

The institutions closed include the Nicaraguan Academy of Letters, which was founded in 1928 and had included opposition writers like Gioconda Belli and Sergio Ramírez.

The country’s congress, dominated by Ortega’s Sandinista party, voted 75-0, with 16 abstentions, to close the groups. A law passed in 2020 requires such groups to register as “agents of a foreign government.”
Ortega’s government has moved against a number of non-governmental organizations that it views as opposition. The president has claimed that groups receiving funding from abroad were part of a broader conspiracy to remove him from office in 2018.


Since Ortega’s re-election to a fourth consecutive term Nov. 7, judges have sentenced opposition leaders, including former high-level Sandinistas and former presidential contenders, to prison terms for “conspiracy to undermine national integrity.”

Thousands have fled into exile since Nicaraguan security forces violently put down the antigovernment protests in 2018. Ortega says the protests were actually an attempted coup with foreign backing, aiming for his overthrow and encouraging foreign nations to apply sanctions on members of his family and government.

 

[Plain Jane]

At least 11 dead, 33 missing after Agatha's hit on Mexico

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Hurricane Agatha left at least 11 people dead and 33 missing in the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca, where it set off flooding and landslides, Gov.

apnews.com

https://apnews.com/article/floods-storms-mexico-hurricanes-2502739e3381feee860b2445c43efb1b#

At least 11 dead, 33 missing after Agatha’s hit on Mexico
yesterday

This satellite image made available by NOAA shows Hurricane Agatha off the Pacific coast of Oaxaca state, Mexico on Monday, May 30, 2022, at 8:30 a.m. EDT. (NOAA via AP)

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Hurricane Agatha left at least 11 people dead and 33 missing in the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca, where it set off flooding and landslides, Gov. Alejandro Murat said Wednesday.

More than 40,000 people in the state have been affected, primarily along the coast and in the mountains just beyond, Murat said.

Agatha was the strongest hurricane since records have been kept to come ashore in May in the eastern Pacific.

It made landfall Monday afternoon on a sparsely populated stretch of small beach towns and fishing villages as a strong Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph (170 kph), but it quickly lost power moving inland over the mountainous interior.

Even as Oaxaca continued to search for the missing and clean up downed trees and flooded homes, Mexican officials were watching another large area of thunderstorms along the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan Peninsula that forecasters said could become a tropical storm later this week.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center gave the system a 70% chance of becoming a tropical depression in the next 48 hours. As it took shape, it dumped heavy rain on southern Mexico and Belize.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval was headed to Oaxaca to oversee recovery operations.

 

[Plain Jane]

Nicaragua government laying waste to civil society

Nicaragua’s Sandinista-controlled congress has cancelled nearly 200 nongovernmental organizations this week, ranging from a local equestrian group to the 94-year-old Nicaraguan Academy of Letters, in what critics say is President Daniel Ortega’s attempt to eliminate the country’s civil society.

apnews.com

https://apnews.com/article/politics...a-nicaragua-983c3aad2a7d2aa2e4f594e1604d34a3#

Nicaragua government laying waste to civil society
yesterday

FILE - In this Sept. 5, 2018 file photo, Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega and his wife and Vice President Rosario Murillo, lead a rally in Managua, Nicaragua. Nicaragua’s Sandinista-controlled congress has cancelled nearly 200 nongovernmental organizations this last week of May 2022, ranging from a local equestrian center to the 94-year-old Nicaraguan Academy of Letters, in what critics say is President Daniel Ortega’s attempt to eliminate the country’s civil society. (AP Photo/Alfredo Zuniga, File)

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Nicaragua’s Sandinista-controlled congress has cancelled nearly 200 nongovernmental organizations this week, ranging from a local equestrian center to the 94-year-old Nicaraguan Academy of Letters, in what critics say is President Daniel Ortega’s attempt to eliminate the country’s civil society.

On Thursday, lawmakers from Ortega’s party and their allies voted unanimously — there were 14 abstentions — to cancel 96 organizations. That followed 83 more on Tuesday. Since popular street protests turned against Ortega’s government in April 2018, the government has cancelled more than 400.

At first, the targets were often tied to prominent opposition figures who Ortega accused of working with foreign interests in an attempt to topple his government. But now the government seems intent on wiping the landscape clean of any organization it does not control.

“These cancellations have the objective of eliminating all social and political vision that differs from that established by the regime,” the Paris-based Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders said in a statement Thursday. “It doesn’t concern only political or defense of human rights associations, but rather artistic, journalistic, educational, scientific, environmental and social organizations are also victims of persecution. The ultimate objective is to eliminate all possibility of an independent civil society in the country.”



The government maintains that the organizations are cancelled because they have not complied with a 2020 requirement to register as “foreign agents.” On Thursday, lawmaker Filiberto Núñez said they had also failed to provide financial statements as required by law.

Nongovernmental organizations began to grow in Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution and experienced a boom during the presidency of Violeta Chamorro. Incidentally, her daughter Cristiana Chamorro, a likely presidential contender now serving a prison sentence at home, decided to close the foundation named for her mother last year after the foreign agents law went into effect.

The breadth of the targets has been mind-boggling.

Thursday’s list included the Society of Pediatrics, the Nicaraguan Development Institute, the Confederation of Nicaraguan Professional Associations and the Nicaragua Internet Association.

Some are not surprising as targets, such as the Center for International Studies founded by Ortega’s stepdaughter Zoilamérica Ortega Murillo, who years ago accused Ortega of sexual abuse and now lives in exile.

But then there are organizations like the Cocibolca Equestrian Center, the western city of Leon’s Rotary Club and the Operation Smile Association that financed free surgeries for children with cleft lip and cleft palate until it was cancelled in March. A prominent businessman associated with that group had participated in protests in 2018.

Many organizations were dedicated to helping the most marginalized in a country already suffering from extreme economic precariousness.



Sociologist Elvira Cuadra said Ortega has sought revenge against social groups that he believes tried to remove him from office in 2018 and also seeks “to destroy the social fabric in order to eliminate the ability to oversee (the government’s) exercise of power.”

“The weaker society, the more the authoritarian state consolidates, the citizens lose the ability to demand accountability by the public administration,” she said.

Cuadra said it was possible some of the cancelled groups were already inactive, but did not believe it was just a tidying up of civil organizations because the government was not giving them an opportunity to get in line with new legal requirements. “What there is is a political will to turn civil society into a desert in Nicaragua.”

 

[Plain Jane]

Colombia tells Mexican leader to butt out of president race

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president has claimed the leftist candidate in Colombia’s presidential race faces “a dirty war” by “conservatives,” leading the Colombian government to tell President Andrés Manuel López Obrador Friday to stay out of its domestic politics.

apnews.com

https://apnews.com/article/politics...o-nicaragua-d84757882925115f73c23a11fb9986fd#

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Colombia tells Mexican leader to butt out of president race
today


MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president has claimed the leftist candidate in Colombia’s presidential race faces “a dirty war” by “conservatives,” leading the Colombian government to tell President Andrés Manuel López Obrador Friday to stay out of its domestic politics.
López Obrador makes a big point of saying he doesn’t interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, and has used that as an excuse to avoid criticizing non-democratic regimes like Nicaragua and Cuba.

But on Friday López Obrador blasted the opposition to front-running presidential candidate, the leftist Gustavo Petro. López Obrador claimed Petro faces a scare campaign, trying to depict him as dangerous radical, something similar to a campaign used against López Obrador in a failed presidential bid in 2006.

“I want to say I’m sending a hug to Petro,” López Obrador. “Why a hug? Because he is facing a dirty war of the most cowardly and undignified kind, everything we suffered in Mexico. All the conservatives are united, unethically.”


Colombia’s foreign relations ministry shot back on its social media accounts, saying the Mexican president’s comments were “an offensive interference in our country’s internal affairs.”
“We ask him to respect the autonomy of the Colombian people to choose their next president without interferences that try to influence voters,” the ministry wrote.

https://apnews.com/article/capitol-...donald-trump-51d415b79021cdbb2c7890f334cf5d95
Last week Colombian voters chose Sen. Petro, a former rebel, to run in a second round against real estate tycoon Rodolfo Hernández, an outsider populist businessman.
Petro led the field of six candidates Sunday with just over 40% of the votes, while Hernández, who has no close ties to any political parties, finished second with more than 28%.

 

[Plain Jane]

Puerto Ricans speak out on US territory's political status

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Hundreds of Puerto Ricans crowded into a convention center Saturday where federal legislators held a public hearing to decide the future of the island’s political status as the U.S. territory struggles to recover from hurricanes, earthquakes and a deep economic crisis.

apnews.com

https://apnews.com/article/politics-puerto-rico-caribbean-congress-392e89b3d50ae00e3c647e58886b27f3#

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Puerto Ricans speak out on US territory’s political status
By DÁNICA COTOyesterday

FILE - The Puerto Rican flag flies in front of Puerto Rico's Capitol as in San Juan, Puerto Rico, July 29, 2015. A group of Democratic congress members, including the House majority leader, on Thursday, May 19, 2022, proposed a binding plebiscite to decide whether Puerto Rico should become a state or gain some sort of independence. (AP Photo/Ricardo Arduengo, File)
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Hundreds of Puerto Ricans crowded into a convention center

Saturday where federal legislators held a public hearing to decide the future of the island’s political status as the U.S. territory struggles to recover from hurricanes, earthquakes and a deep economic crisis.

One by one, dozens of people ranging from politicians to retirees to young people leaned into a microphone and spoke against the island’s current territorial status, which recognizes its people as U.S. citizens but does not allow them to vote in presidential elections, denies them certain federal benefits and allows them one representative in Congress with limited voting powers.

The hearing comes two weeks after a group of Democratic congress members including the House majority leader and one Republican proposed what would be the first-ever binding plebiscite that would offer voters in Puerto Rico three options: statehood, independence or independence with free association, whose terms would be defined following negotiations.
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Congress would have to accept Puerto Rico as the 51st state if voters so choose it, but the proposal is not expected to survive in the Senate, where Republicans have long opposed statehood.
POLITICS
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• https://apnews.com/article/2022-mid...ampaign-2016-9126bc3a99e2084e6654a2bd112c467a

“Everyone, even congress people themselves, know that the possibilities of this becoming law are minimal and maybe non-existent, but it doesn’t stop being important,” former Puerto Rico governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá told The Associated Press.

About an hour into the hearing, a small group of people including a former gubernatorial candidate who supports independence burst into the ballroom, pointed fingers at the panel of U.S. legislators and yelled, “120 years of colonialism!”

The majority of the audience booed the group and yelled at them to leave as U.S. lawmakers called for calm.

“Democracy is not always pretty, but it’s necessary,” said Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, chairman of the U.S. House of Natural Resources Committee, which oversees affairs in U.S. territories.

The proposal of a binding plebiscite — a measure that has not yet been introduced in committee — has frustrated some on an island that already has held seven unilateral, nonbinding referendums on its political status, with no overwhelming majority emerging. The last referendum was held in November 2020, with 53% of votes for statehood and 47% against, with only a little more than half of registered voters participating.

Luis Herrero, a political consultant, said during the hearing that even if enough people support statehood, there are not enough votes in the Senate to make Puerto Rico a state: “Not today, not yesterday, not tomorrow. Since 1898, Puerto Rican statehood has been a mirage, lip service to score cheap political points or to raise a few dollars for a campaign.”

Saturday’s hearing comes amid ongoing discontent with Puerto Rico’s current political status, with the U.S. Supreme Court further angering many in April after upholding the differential treatment of residents of Puerto Rico. In an 8-1 vote, the court ruled that making Puerto Ricans ineligible for the Supplemental Security Income program, which offers benefits to blind, disabled and older Americans, did not unconstitutionally discriminate against them.


As a result, many of those who spoke at Saturday’s public hearing welcomed the proposed binding plebiscite.

“We finally see the light at the end of the tunnel,” said Víctor Pérez, a U.S. military veteran who lamented the current political status. “Even after all our service and sacrifice, we come back home and we are denied full voting rights and equality. ... We cannot vote for our president, our commander in chief, (but) they send us to war.”

Grijalva said the testimonies given Saturday will help him and other legislators revise the proposed measure, which he said is a way to make amends. He said he hopes it will go to the House floor by August. If eventually approved, it would be held on Nov. 5, 2023.

Acevedo, the former governor, said he hasn’t lost hope despite numerous attempts throughout the decades to change the political status of Puerto Rico, which became a U.S. territory in 1898 following the Spanish-American War.

“A solution to this problem of more than 120 years has to happen at some point,” he said. “When will conditions allow for it? That’s unpredictable.”

 

[Plain Jane]

Russia hits Kyiv with missiles; Putin warns West on arms

Russia took aim at Western military supplies for Ukraine by launching airstrikes on Kyiv that it claimed destroyed tanks donated from abroad.

apnews.com

https://apnews.com/article/russia-u...nd-politics-e98d1d788e132c2a1f2c8ead7ae58761#

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Russia says Kyiv strikes destroyed tanks donated by West
By JOHN LEICESTER32 minutes ago



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A woman walks in front of buildings destroyed during attacks in Borodyanka, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, June 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s defense ministry said the military destroyed tanks donated by Ukraine’s allies and other armor in a barrage of missile strikes that shattered five weeks of eerie calm in Ukraine’s capital early Sunday. There was no immediate confirmation from the Ukrainian side.

In a posting on the Telegram app, the Russian ministry said high-precision, long-range air-launched missiles were used. It said the strikes destroyed on the outskirts of Kyiv destroyed T-72 tanks supplied by Eastern European countries and other armored vehicles located in buildings of a car-repair business.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A barrage of Russian cruise missiles shattered five weeks of eerie calm in Ukraine’s capital early Sunday, with plumes of smoke billowing into the skies as railway facilities and other infrastructure were hit. Authorities said one person was hospitalized with injuries.



Kyiv hadn’t faced any such strikes since the April 28 visit of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. The early morning attack triggered air raid alarms and showed that Russia still had the capability and willingness to hit at Ukraine’s heart since abandoning its wider offensive across the country to instead focus its efforts in the east.

• https://apnews.com/article/russia-u...and-politics-fd93d9ff5fed078965860f06b1a06be3

The strikes appeared aimed at thwarting the resupplying of Ukrainian fighters, a rising concern in Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin used a televised interview on Sunday to make a veiled warning to Western nations who have supplied weapons to Ukraine, saying Russia would use ”our means of destruction” to hit “objects that we have not yet struck” if Ukraine gets longer-range rocket systems.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Putin was referring to new targets within or outside Ukraine’s borders.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 has led to untold tens of thousands of civilian and troop deaths, driven millions from their homes, sparked vast sanctions against Putin’s government and allies, and strangled exports of critical wheat and other grains from Ukraine through Black Sea ports — limiting access to bread and other products in Africa, the Middle East and beyond.
The missiles hit Kyiv’s Darnytski and Dniprovski districts, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app, punctuating the Kremlin’s recently reduced goal of seizing the entire Donbas region in the east. Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian forces for eight years in the Donbas and established self-proclaimed republics. In recent days, Russian forces have focused on capturing the city of Sievierodonetsk.

A billowing pillar of smoke filled the air with an acrid odor in Kyiv’s eastern Darnystki district, and the charred, blackened wreckage of a warehouse-type structure was smoldering. Police near the site told an Associated Press reporter that military authorities had banned the taking of images. Soldiers also blocked off a road in a nearby area leading toward a large railway yard.
The sites struck included facilities for the state rail company, Ukrzaliznytsia, said Serhiy Leshchenko, an adviser in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, on Telegram.


Russian strikes have repeatedly targeted railway facilities, seemingly aimed at slowing the provision of weapons to Ukrainian forces on the front lines. The cruise missiles appeared to have been launched from a Tu-95 bomber flying over the Caspian Sea, the Air Force Command said on Facebook. It said air defense units shot down one missile.

In a television interview on Sunday, Putin lashed out at Western deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, saying they aim to prolong the conflict.

“All this fuss around additional deliveries of weapons, in my opinion, has only one goal: To drag out the armed conflict as much as possible,” Putin said, alluding to U.S. plans to supply multiple launch rocket systems to Kyiv. He insisted such supplies were unlikely to change much for the Ukrainian government, which he said was merely making up for losses of rockets of similar range that they already had.

If Kyiv gets longer-range rockets, he added, Moscow will “draw appropriate conclusions and use our means of destruction, which we have plenty of, in order to strike at those objects that we have not yet struck.”



Elsewhere, Russian forces continued their push to take ground in eastern Ukraine, with missile and airstrikes carried out on cities and villages of the Luhansk region, with the war now past the 100-day mark.

Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said on Telegram that “airstrikes by Russian Ka-52 helicopters were carried out in the areas of Girske and Myrna Dolyna, by Su-25 aircraft - on Ustynivka,” while Lysychansk was hit by a missile from the Tochka-U complex.

A total of 13 houses were damaged in Girske, and five in Lysychansk. Another airstrike was reported in the eastern city of Kramatorsk by its mayor Oleksandr Goncharenko. No one was killed in the attack, he said, but two of the city’s enterprises sustained “significant damage.”
On Sunday morning, Ukraine’s General Staff accused Russian forces of using phosphorus munitions in the village of Cherkaski Tyshky in the Kharkiv region. The claim couldn’t be independently verified.

The update also confirmed strikes on Kyiv, which occurred in the early hours of Sunday. It wasn’t immediately clear from the statement which infrastructure facilities in Kyiv were hit.
The General Staff said Russian forces continue assault operations in Sievierodonetsk, one of two key cities left to be captured in the Luhansk region of the Donbas. The Russians control the eastern part of the city, the update said, and are focusing on trying to encircle Ukrainian forces in the area and “blocking off main logistical routes.”



The U.K. military said in its daily intelligence update that Ukrainian counterattacks in Sieverodonetsk were “likely blunting the operational momentum Russian forces previously gained through concentrating combat units and firepower.” Russian forces previously had been making a string of advances in the city, but Ukrainian fighters have pushed back in recent days.
The statement also said Russia’s military was partly relying on reserve forces of the Luhansk region.

“These troops are poorly equipped and trained, and lack heavy equipment in comparison to regular Russian units,” the intelligence update said, adding that “this approach likely indicates a desire to limit casualties suffered by regular Russian forces.”

Far from the battlefield, Ukraine’s national soccer players are hoping to secure a World Cup spot when the team takes on Wales later Sunday in Cardiff.

On the diplomatic front, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was heading to Serbia for talks with President Aleksandar Vucic early this week, followed by a visit to Turkey on Tuesday, where the Russian envoy is expected to discuss Ukraine with his Turkish counterpart.


Turkey has been trying to work with U.N. and the warring countries to help clear the way for Ukrainian grain to be exported to Turkish ports, though no deal on the issue appeared imminent.

A Ukrainian presidential adviser urged European nations to respond with “more sanctions, more weapons” to Sunday’s missile attacks.

Mykhailo Podolyak referenced remarks Friday by French President Emmanuel Macron, who said Putin had made a “historic error” by invading Ukraine, but that world powers shouldn’t “humiliate Russia” so that a diplomatic exit could be found when the fighting stops.

“While someone asks not to humiliate, the Kremlin resorts to new insidious attacks,” Podolyak tweeted. “Each of such terrorist attacks must face a tough response from European capitals: more sanctions, more weapons.”

Ukrainian officials have denounced the remark, and have criticized France and some other European countries for continuing to speak to Putin and talking about diplomatic solutions instead of working to push Russia out of Ukraine militarily.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the Ukraine war at Russia-Ukraine | Breaking News & Live Updates | AP News

 

[Plain Jane]

In blow to Biden, Mexico president to skip Americas Summit

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has confirmed that he will not attend the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles this week, dealing a blow to the event hosted by U.S.

apnews.com

https://apnews.com/article/biden-covid-politics-health-6efb4c2bde5d080a9ee400a0981f7a61#

Biden hoping to avoid Summit of the Americas flop in LA
By ELLIOT SPAGAT, JOSHUA GOODMAN and CHRIS MEGERIANtoday



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President Joe Biden speaks about the May jobs report, Friday, June 3, 2022, in Rehoboth Beach, Del. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When leaders gather at the Summit of the Americas this week, the focus is likely to veer from policy issues — migration, climate change and galloping inflation — and instead shift to something Hollywood thrives on: the drama of the red carpet.
With Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador topping a list of leaders threatening to stay home to protest the exclusion by the host United States of authoritarian leaders from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, experts say the event could turn into a embarrassment for U.S. President Joe Biden.

Even some progressive Democrats have criticized the administration for bowing to pressure from exiles in the swing state of Florida and barring communist Cuba, which attended the last two summits.

“The real question is why the Biden administration didn’t do its homework,” said Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister who now teaches at New York University.
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While the Biden administration insists the president in Los Angeles will outline his vision for a “sustainable, resilient, and equitable future” for the hemisphere, Castañeda said it’s clear from the last-minute wrangling over the guest list that Latin America is not a priority for the U.S. president.

https://apnews.com/article/election...al-elections-ebeb54b08dc8fee544fd9bf74c9db730
“This ambitious agenda, no one knows exactly what it is, other than a series of bromides,” he said.
The U.S. is hosting the summit for the first time since its launch in 1994, in Miami, as part of an effort to galvanize support for a free trade agreement stretching from Alaska to Patagonia.

But that goal was abandoned more than 15 years ago amid a rise in leftist politics in the region. With China’s influence expanding, most nations have come to expect — and need — less from Washington.

As a result, the premier forum for regional cooperation has languished, at times turning into a stage for airing historical grievances, like when the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez at the 2009 summit in Trinidad & Tobago gave President Barack Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s classic tract, “The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.”
The U.S. opening to former Cold War adversary Cuba, which was sealed with Obama’s handshake with Raul Castro at the 2015 summit in Panama, lowered some of the ideological tensions.
“It’s a huge missed opportunity,” Ben Rhodes, who led the Cuba thaw as deputy national security advisor in the Obama administration, said recently in his “Pod Save the World” podcast. “We are isolating ourselves by taking that step, because you’ve got Mexico, you’ve got Caribbean countries saying they’re not going to come — which is only going to make Cuba look stronger than us.”

To bolster turnout and avert a flop, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris worked the phones in recent days, speaking with the leaders of Argentina and Honduras, both of whom initially expressed support for Mexico’s proposed boycott. Former Sen. Christopher Dodd crisscrossed the region as a special adviser for the summit, in the process persuading far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was a staunch ally of President Donald Trump and hasn’t once spoken to Biden, to belatedly confirm his attendance.
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Ironically, the decision to exclude Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela wasn’t the whim of the U.S. alone. The region’s governments in 2001, in Quebec City, declared that any break with democratic order is an “insurmountable obstacle” to future participation in the summit process.
The governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela aren’t even active members of the Washington-based Organization of the American States, which organizes the summit.
“This should’ve been a talking point from the beginning,” said Tom Shannon, a former undersecretary of state for political affairs who in a long diplomatic career attended several summits. “It’s not a U.S. imposition. It was consensual. If leaders want to change that, then we should have a conversation first.”

After the last summit in Peru, in 2018, which Trump didn’t even bother to attend, many predicted there was no future for the regional gathering.

In response to Trump’s pullout, only 17 of the region’s 35 heads of state attended. Few saw value in bringing together for a photo op leaders from such dissimilar places as aid-dependent Haiti, industrial powerhouses Mexico and Brazil and violence-plagued Central America — each with their own unique challenges and bilateral agenda with Washington.
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“As long as we don’t speak with a single voice, no one is going to listen to us,” said former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, who also faults Mexico and Brazil — the region’s two economic powers — for the current drift in hemispheric relations. “With a cacophony of voices, it is much more difficult to find our place in the world.”

To the surprise of many, the U.S. in early 2019 picked up the ball, offering to host the summit. At the time, the Trump administration was enjoying something of a leadership renaissance in Latin America, albeit among mostly similar-minded conservative governments around the narrow issue of restoring democracy in Venezuela.

But that goodwill unraveled as Trump floated the idea of invading Venezuela to remove Nicolás Maduro — a threat recalling the worst excesses of the Cold War. Then the pandemic hit, taking a devastating human and economic toll on a region that accounted for more than a quarter of the world’s COVID-19 deaths despite making up only 8% of the population. The region’s politics were upended.

The election of Biden, who was Obama’s point man for Latin America and had decades of hands-on experience in the region from his time on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, set expectations for a relaunch.
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But as popular angst spread during the pandemic, the Biden administration was slow to match the vaccine diplomacy of Russia and China, although it did eventually provide 70 million doses to the hemisphere. Biden also maintained the Trump-era restrictions on migration, reinforcing the view that it was neglecting its own neighbors.

Since then, Biden’s hallmark policy in the region — a $4 billion aid package to attack the root causes of migration in Central America — has stalled in Congress with no apparent effort to revive it. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also diverted attention from the region, something experts say could come back to bite Biden if rising interest rates in the U.S. trigger a stampede of capital outflows and debt defaults in emerging markets.

There have been smaller snubs too: When leftist millennial Gabriel Boric was elected president in Chile, setting high expectations for a generational shift in the region’s politics, the U.S. delegation to his inauguration was led by the second-lowest ranking Cabinet member — Isabel Guzman, head of the Small Business Administration.
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Shannon said for the summit to be successful Biden shouldn’t try to lay out a grand American vision for the hemisphere but rather show sensitivity to the region’s embrace of other global powers, concerns about gaping inequality and traditional mistrust of the U.S.
“More than speeches, he will need to listen,” Shannon said.
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AP writers Matthew Lee in Washington; Daniel Politi in Buenos Aires, Argentina; David Biller in Rio de Janeiro and Gonzalo Solano in Quito, Ecuador, contributed to this report.
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[Melodi]

As I said before unless they at least invite representatives (not necessarily the Heads of State) of every country in Latin America then it isn't a conference of the Americas, it is a conference put on by "America."

Even nations mostly friendly to the US see that, and realize that nothing will be accomplished other than being forced to listen to "Your Big Brother to the North wants you to do to do this..." type speeches and some are likely to just skip the sharade.

Others may attend anyway, but they are not likely to just sit back and do what they are told, and/or they will look at it as a nice vacation and a chance for the wives/spouses to go shopping.

 

[Plain Jane]

Dominican Republic environment minister killed in office – DW – 06/06/2022

Environment Minister Orlando Jorge Mera was shot dead after a gunman entered his office in Santo Domingo. The suspected shooter was a close friend of the minister, according to officials.

www.dw.com

Dominican Republic environment minister killed in his office
Environment Minister Orlando Jorge Mera was shot dead after a gunman entered his office in Santo Domingo. The suspected shooter was a close friend of the minister, according to officials.




Police and emergency vehicles rushed to the Dominican Republic's Environment Ministry after the shooting broke out

An unknown assailant shot and killed the Dominican Republic's Environment Minister Orlando Jorge Mera after entering the ministry, the country's government said on Monday.
Authorities have been sparse with details about the situation, although the presidency said the shooter had been detained by police.

What we know so far
Jorge Mera was killed in an office in the Environment Ministry, which is located in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo.

A spokesperson for President Luis Abinader confirmed his death in a statement, saying the suspected gunman was a close friend of the late minister and had been detained by police.
"We express our deepest condolences" to Jorge Mera's family, the spokesperson said, offering the government's support.

Mera was part of a powerful political family, as the son of a former Dominican president, Jorge Blanco. His sister is a deputy minister in Abinader's administration.

Authorities did not immediately release further details and it was unclear whether others were injured.

The environment ministry confirmed that an incident had taken place, writing on Twitter that they were "troubled by the situation."

Reporters on the scene reported a large police and emergency vehicle presence at the building.

Jorge Mera's death was mourned by fellow government official Bartolome Pujals, who heads the Dominican government's Cabinet of Innovation.

"His death is a tragedy," Pujals wrote on Twitter. "We Dominicans have to come together to achieve a pact for peace and peaceful coexistence. No more violence."

Jorge Mera was a 55-year-old lawyer and founding member of the center-left Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM). He was appointed to head the Environment Ministry in August 2020. He was also the son of former Dominican President Salvador Jorge Blanco, who held office from 1982 to 1986.

This is a developing story and will be updated.
rs/msh (AP, AFP, EFE)

 

[Zagdid]

Argentina Police Fail to Break Chinese Mafia

Chinese mafia groups are alive and well in Argentina, despite years of police efforts to curb their many criminal enterprises.

insightcrime.org

Argentina Police Fail to Break Chinese Mafia
ARGENTINA/6 JUN 2022 BY SCOTT MISTLER-FERGUSON

A series of arrests have highlighted how Chinese organized crime maintains a strong influence in Argentina’s capital, where merchants often must pay tens of thousands of dollars in extortion fees.

The president of the Chinese Supermarket Chamber of Commerce, Ke Deqiang, was charged with being behind an extortion ring in La Plata, a city near the capital, according to Infobae. On May 19, Deqiang escaped from the police station where he was being held – by walking out the door.

Footage of his escape released by Infobae shows him walking out of the building and then climbing over an outside gate.
“It is totally impossible to escape from that police station without complicity from the outside,” the former head of the First Police Station in La Plata told Infobae. “There is no way to leave without the door being opened for you,” he affirmed.

Also in May, a string of police raids in Buenos Aires’ eastern neighborhood of La Boca dismantled another Chinese mafia extortion ring. The ring’s alleged leader, along with several other members, were described by authorities as belonging to the Panda clan, a longtime mafia group in Argentina.

The group was found with notes written in Mandarin demanding payment of $50,000 from Chinese supermarkets in the area. The notes warned that failure to pay would end in them being shot.

InSight Crime Analysis
Efforts to target the leadership of different Chinese mafia groups in Argentina have proven unsuccessful in stopping their extortive practices. Corruption and cultural differences on the part of public officials still appear to play a role in the inability of police to root them out.

These groups maintain a hand in drug trafficking, human smuggling, and money laundering. But they mostly prey on the Chinese diaspora in and around Buenos Aires, reaping profits from extortion.

Police efforts to dismantle powerful factions within the organization have been consistently stymied by language barriers, resistance from within local Chinese communities and of course, official collusion.

In 2016, the “Pixiu Mafia,” considered the most powerful Chinese mafia in the country and potentially the continent, was dealt a heavy blow. A series of high-level arrests under Operation Dragon’s Head was said to significantly weaken the organization.

Now some seven years later, criminal groups appear to be employing the exact same tactics, extorting businesses for anywhere between $30,000-50,000 with impunity.

 

[Plain Jane]

Migrant caravan on the move in southern Mexico

Several thousand migrants have started walking through southern Mexico, covering ground before the heat of the day — and while authorities show no signs yet of trying to stop them.

apnews.com

Migrant caravan on the move in southern Mexico

Migrant caravan on the move in southern Mexico
By EDGAR H. CLEMENTE and FERNANDA PESCEyesterday



1 of 7
Migrants, many from Central American and Venezuela, walk along the Huehuetan highway in Chiapas state, Mexico, early Tuesday, June 7, 2022. The group left Tapachula on Monday, tired of waiting to normalize their status in a region with little work and still far from their ultimate goal of reaching the United States. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
HUIXTLA, Mexico (AP) — Several thousand migrants walked on through southern Mexico on Tuesday, covering ground while authorities showed no signs yet of trying to stop them.
The largest migrant caravan of the year provided a live illustration to regional leaders meeting in Los Angeles this week at the Summit of the Americas of the challenges governments face in managing immigration flows.

Mexico has dissolved smaller caravans this year through force, but more recently by offering them transportation to other cities farther north where they could legalize their status.
Luis García Villagrán, a migrant advocate traveling with the caravan, said negotiations for such a resolution were already taking place, but nothing had firmed up.

The caravan reached the town of Huixtla on Tuesday, about 25 miles from Tapachula, where they started Monday.

Eymar Hernández Benavides was a state police officer in Venezuela. In January, his extended family, divided between Tachira and Barquisimeto, began a group chat on a messaging platform. For three months they aired their grievances — product scarcity, high food prices, constant electrical blackouts — and planned their exit.


Hernández sold his car and other belongings to fund the two-week odyssey from Venezuela to Mexico, including through the harrowing jungle-clad Darien Gap that separates Colombia and Panama. That was hardest part for his wife, Jenny Villamizar. Not just the swollen rivers, rain, wildlife and thick vegetation, but watching their three children suffer.

Son of Buffalo victim pushes Congress: 'What are you doing?'
More than 130,000 migrants crossed the Darien Gap in 2021. Since January, more than 34,000, including 18,000 Venezuelans, have crossed there, according to Panama’s National Migration Service.

On Tuesday, Hernández walked up a rural highway in southern Mexico with 17 relatives, including his wife and their children, the 3-year-old in a stroller.

“It’s not Venezuela, it is the president, Venezuela works, it is a paradise, we didn’t want to leave our country,” Hernández said, referring to President Nicolás Maduro, who was not invited to the summit.

He said they want the U.S. to help resolve the crisis in Venezuela so they can return, but in the meantime they want asylum in the United States. They did inquire about asylum in Mexico in Tapachula, but were given an appointment for July. Through odd jobs they earned enough money to rent just one room, so they decided to join the caravan instead.

Their goal for Tuesday was to make it to Huixtla, Chiapas, a town still more than 1,000 miles from the closest point on the U.S. border. Mexican National Guard and immigration agents were visible along the route, but had not made an effort to stop the migrants. They did make those who had gotten rides on truck trailers get off and walk, apparently hoping to tire them out.

María José Gómez, 24, and Roselys Gutierrez, 25, a couple also from Venezuela, said they had left Colombia after experiencing homophobia there and suffering physical attacks.

They arrived in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula near the border with Guatemala a week ago and joined the caravan when it left Monday. Gómez was walking Tuesday with the rainbow flag and Gutierrez with that of Venezuela.


“We are very tired and want this torment to be over,” Gómez said. “We have walked a lot on the trip. We passed through the Darien jungle and have been in seven countries counting this one.”

Mexico has tried to contain migrants to the south, far from the U.S. border. But many have grown frustrated there by the slow bureaucratic process to regularize their status and the lack of job opportunities to provide for their families.

Mexico’s asylum agency has been overwhelmed with requests in recent years as policies leave migrants few other options than to request asylum so they can travel freely. Last year, Mexico received more than 130,000 asylum requests, more than triple the year before. This year, requests are already running 20% above last year.

The phenomenon of migrant caravans took off in 2018. Previously, smaller annual caravans moved through Mexico to highlight migrants’ plight, but without the stated goal of reaching the U.S. border.

But then several thousand migrants began walking together, betting on safety in numbers and a greater likelihood that government officials would not try to stop them. It worked at first, but more recently the Guatemalan and Mexican governments have been far more aggressive in moving to dissolve the caravans before they can build momentum.


While the caravans have garnered media attention, the migrants traveling in them represent a small fraction of the migratory flow that carries people to the U.S. border every day, usually with the help of smugglers.

The Biden administration had hoped to hammer out a regional agreement on managing migrant flows at the summit, but the presidents of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are not attending, a notable absence of some of the leading migrant-sending and transit countries.

Keira Lara, a 30-year-old from El Salvador, trudged down the highway Tuesday with three of her four children. She had just arrived in Mexico a week earlier and only heard about the summit once she joined the caravan Monday. She said government officials had demanded money from her at every border they crossed.

Of the leaders meeting in Los Angeles this week she asked “that they let us pass, that there isn’t so much corruption in governments, because that’s why people migrate.”

See also:

INTL - Mexican President Calls for American Superstate, Open Borders

https://www.breitbart.com/latin-america/2022/06/06/mexican-president-calls-for-american-superstate-open-borders/ Mexican President Calls for American Superstate, Open Borders AP Photo/Fernando Llano NEIL MUNRO6 Jun 20222,639 Mexico’s president is reviving calls for a continental superstate...

www.timebomb2000.com

 

[Plain Jane]

Bolsonaro Implies Doubt on Biden Election Ahead of Latin America Summit - The Last Refuge

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro wasn’t just throwing shade at the 2020 election outcome for Joe Biden, Bolsonaro seemingly ponders the question about how many western leaders might be the result of WEF manipulated elections. All things considered; it is a valid question. SAO PAULO, June 7...

theconservativetreehouse.com

Bolsonaro Implies Doubt on Biden Election Ahead of Latin America Summit
June 8, 2022 | Sundance | 39 Comments

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro wasn’t just throwing shade at the 2020 election outcome for Joe Biden, Bolsonaro seemingly ponders the question about how many western leaders might be the result of WEF manipulated elections. All things considered; it is a valid question.

SAO PAULO, June 7 (Reuters) – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday cast doubt on the 2020 election victory of U.S. President Joe Biden, just two days before they are due to meet for the first time during the Summit of the Americas.
Bolsonaro, an outspoken admirer of former President Donald Trump, said in a TV interview that he still harbors suspicions about Biden’s victory and he again praised Trump’s government.
In 2020, the Brazilian leader voiced allegations of U.S. election fraud as he backed Trump. Bolsonaro was also one of the last world leaders to recognize Biden’s win.
“The American people are the ones who talk about it (election fraud). I will not discuss the sovereignty of another country. But Trump was doing really well,” Bolsonaro said. “We don’t want that to happen in Brazil,” he added. (read more)

With the totalitarian comfort we have seen from multiple western governments’, in both scale and scope, it does make you wonder just how far they would be willing to go to retain power. After all, there are trillions at stake.

 

[Plain Jane]

Biden seeks to counter China at Americas summit – DW – 06/09/2022

The US president has outlined a new plan for economic cooperation with Latin America amidst rising Chinese influence in the region. He is also expected to present a new plan for regional migration issues.

www.dw.com

Biden seeks to counter China at Americas summit
The US president has outlined a new plan for economic cooperation with Latin America amidst rising Chinese influence in the region. He is also expected to present a new plan for regional migration issues.




'When democracy is under assault around the world, let us unite again and renew our conviction that democracy is... the essential ingredient to Americas' future,' Biden said as he opened the summit

The US-led Summit of the Americas had a stacked schedule on Thursday, with tense talks expected between US President Joe Biden and his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro as Washington seeks to stem China's rising influence in the region.

To that end, Biden gave a speech late Wednesday outlining a proposed new economic partnership with Latin America, hoping to sway leaders away from Beijing's promises to invest in large infrastructure projects.

"We have to invest in making sure our trade is sustainable and responsible in creating supply chains that are more resilient, more secure and more sustainable," Biden said at the summit's opening gala.

Biden's speech stressed increased US economic engagement, including more investment and building on existing trade deals. He also called on leaders in the region to preserve and strengthen democracy.

However, his "Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity," which still appears to be a work in progress, stops short of offering tariff relief and, according to a senior administration official, will initially focus on "like-minded partners" that already have US trade accords. Negotiations were expected to begin in the next few months, the official added.

The plan also proposes to revitalize the Inter-American Development Bank and create clean energy jobs. Still, the administration appeared to be moving cautiously, mindful that an initiative that promotes jobs abroad could face potential pushback at home.

Mexico snub
The summit got underway under the shadow of one the region's most important leaders, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, announcing he would skip the meeting in protest of Washington refusing to invite what it called the "dictators" of Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba.

Lopez Obrador instead sent his foreign minister, as did several other leaders, dampening Biden's hopes for a major reset of relations between the US and Latin America.



Watch video02:14
Migrant caravan from Mexico heads for US
Fraught Bolosonaro meeting
There will likely also be tension when Biden meets for the first time with President Bolsonaro, an ally of former President Donald Trump. Bolsonaro is running for a second term, but currently trails slightly in early polls against leftist candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In the wake of these polls, Bolsonaro has been taking a cue from Trump and been casting doubt on the credibility of his country's elections.

When Bolsonaro accepted an invitation to the summit, US news agency AP reported that he asked that Biden not confront him over his election attacks, citing three of the Brazilian leader's Cabinet ministers who requested anonymity to discuss the issue.

However, Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, rejected the idea that Biden had agreed to any conditions for the meeting with Bolsonaro.

Also on Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris was scheduled to sit down with Caribbean leaders to discussed environmental protection and climate change, while First Lady Jill Biden would host a brunch for leaders' spouses.

On Friday, Biden is expected to talk migration, a key issue as more people fleeing violence and economic hardship in Latin America gather at the US-Mexico border. The president has called his new migration plan "a ground-breaking, integrated new approach" with shared responsibility across the hemisphere, but has provided few specifics.
es/msh (AP, Reuters)

 

[Plain Jane]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

n Informs Venezuela's "Interim" President Juan Guaido Of Plans To Ease Sanctions On Maduro

BY TYLER DURDEN
THURSDAY, JUN 09, 2022 - 12:05 PM
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido was apparently reminded that Washington hasn't forgotten about him after the White House in the last two months began reaching out to the Maduro government in a desire to tap alternative oil supplies given the ongoing war and Ukraine and (at this point partial) European embargo on Russian oil. For a couple of years starting in 2019 as the Trump administration was actively pursuing regime change in Caracas, Guado was in the international media spotlight as US-recognized "interim president". But since then, and through the start of the Biden administration, he's been largely forgotten about.

VOA News reported that "President Joe Biden reaffirmed U.S. support for Juan Guaido during a phone call Wednesday, despite not inviting the Venezuelan opposition leader to the Summit of the Americas, a gathering of leaders from the countries of North, South and Central America and the Caribbean that he is hosting in Los Angeles."

So there are no Maduro government representatives at the LA Summit of the Americas and no 'interim president' Guaido either. On top of that, no top leaders from Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, and Antigua and Barbuda.


In its Wednesday evening live network coverage, even CNN admitted the US-hosted Summit of the Americas is already off to an awkward start, given embarrassing situation for the White House that the president of Mexico has boycotted, over the fact that the Venezuelan and other governments run by "dictators" weren't invited.

As for the Guaido phone call, it wasn't even made from the Oval, but while Biden was en route on Air Force One. In a readout, Biden said he stressed "recognition of and support for the 2015 democratically elected National Assembly and Guaido as the interim president of Venezuela," and affirmed support for "Venezuelan-led negotiations as the best path toward a peaceful restoration of democratic institutions, free and fair elections."

We should note that making the call just before arriving at the summit was like being phoned by a "friend" who's en route to a party you're not invited to.

And most importantly, the readout said Biden informed Guaido of plans for likely sanctions relief, though we wonder what role the opposition representative has in any substantive negotiations:

President Biden reaffirmed the United States is willing to calibrate sanctions policy as informed by the outcomes of negotiations that empower the Venezuelan people to determine the future of their country.

To recap, the Biden White House hopes to free up Venezuelan oil if Maduro is cooperative - but still snubbed him by refusing a Summit of the Americas invite. Simultaneously, Guaido has been reaffirmed in his non-real, completely irrelevant role as "interim president" - but he wasn't invited either.

And meantime, amid the contradictions on Venezuela, the single most influential Latin American country's' president, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has quite visibly protested the summit. Oh but there will be "civil society activists" there in Venezuela's stead...

“We thought the best way to lift up our desire to see that Venezuelan-led dialogue and, ultimately, a better future for the Venezuelan people was to focus on the invitations to Venezuelan civil society activists, who will participate in various aspects of the summit,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One.

There were some awkward moments for US admin officials surrounding the Venezuela question...

Biden is formally unveiling the "Americas Partnership'' during the summit, which the administration has described as a five-pronged effort to build-up regional economies by advancing free-trade agreements and addressing "inequality and lack of economic opportunity and equity."

On Friday Biden is expected to attempt to tackle the immigration crisis via what's called the "Los Angeles Declaration on Migration" - which so far has only been hinted at as a “comprehensive'' approach to addressing the crisis.

 

[Plain Jane]

Biden seeks unity, finds discord at Summit of the Americas

President Joe Biden tried to present a unifying vision for the Western Hemisphere on Thursday but the Summit of the Americas quickly spilled into open discord.

apnews.com

https://apnews.com/article/russia-u...cs-business-6c477ae1abaab57acf9f1f211b429f6a#

Biden seeks unity, finds discord at Summit of the Americas
By CHRIS MEGERIAN and JOSH BOAKtoday



1 of 14
President Joe Biden, right, meets with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro during the Summit of the Americas, Thursday, June 9, 2022, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — President Joe Biden tried to present a unifying vision for the Western Hemisphere on Thursday but the Summit of the Americas quickly spilled into open discord, a telling illustration of the difficulties of bringing together North and South America around shared goals on migration, the economy and climate.

“There is no reason why the Western Hemisphere can’t be the most forward looking, most democratic, most prosperous, most peaceful, secure region in the world,” Biden said at the start of the summit. “We have unlimited potential.”

Quick on the heels of Biden’s remarks, Belize’s prime minister, John Briceño, publicly objected to countries being excluded from the summit by the United States and to the continued U.S. embargo on Cuba.

“This summit belongs to all of the Americas — it is therefore inexcusable that there are countries of the Americas that are not here, and the power of the summit is diminished by their absence,” Briceño said. “At this most critical juncture, when the future of our hemisphere is at stake, we stand divided. And that is why the Summit of the Americas should have been inclusive. Geography, not politics, defines the Americas.”


Additional criticism came from Argentina’s president, Alberto Fernández.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-u...and-politics-4f8a7e5079688797dfedb0054604ff3e
“We definitely would have wished for a different Summit of the Americas,” Fernández said in Spanish. “The silence of those who are absent is calling to us.”

The backlash over exclusions, which included a boycott by the Mexican president, came despite a consensus reached at the 2001 summit in Quebec City that future conferences would not include undemocratic governments. Biden, speaking later, tried to smooth over the differences by focusing on the issues at hand rather than on the guest list.

“I think we’re off to a strong start. We heard a lot of important ideas raised,” Biden said. “And notwithstanding some of the disagreements relating to participation, on the substantive matters what I heard was almost uniformity.”

The disparities in wealth, governance and national interests have made it challenging for Biden to duplicate the partnerships he has assembled in Asia and Europe, setting low expectations at a summit hosted by the U.S. for the first time since 1994.

View attachment 1654854851775.png

“It’s always been difficult to find consensus in Latin America,” said Ryan Berg, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. “This is a hugely diverse region, and it’s obviously difficult for it to speak with one voice.”

With diplomatic efforts strained and legislative proposals stranded in a polarized Congress, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris focused on trying to get companies behind their efforts.

“The private sector is able to move quickly to mobilize vast amounts of investment capital that’s going to be needed to unlock the enormous potential for growth in this hemisphere,” Biden said at an event with business leaders.

On a busy day of diplomacy, Biden met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and agreed to visit Canada in the coming months, two government officials familiar with the plans told The Associated Press. They were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Biden held talks with Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, an ally of former President Donald Trump. Bolsonaro is running for a second term and has been casting doubt on the credibility of his country’s elections, to the alarm of officials in Washington.


Bolsonaro had asked that Biden not confront him over his election attacks or Amazon deforestation, according to three of his Cabinet ministers who requested anonymity to discuss the issue.

Biden refrained from doing so during the brief, public portion of their meeting, although he made a reference to Brazil’s “vibrant, inclusive democracy and strong electoral institutions.”
The U.S. president also said Brazil has made some “real sacrifices” in protecting the Amazon, and “I think the rest of the world should be able to help you preserve as much as you can.”

Bolsonaro appeared defensive on both issues. On the Amazon, he said, “at times we feel threatened in our sovereignty in that region of the country” and that “we stand as an example in the eyes of the world when it comes to the environmental agenda.”


He said he wants Brazil’s election in October to be “clean, reliable and auditable so there is no doubt after the vote,” repeating a frequent falsehood that the current system cannot be audited.

“I am sure that it will be held in this democratic spirit,” Bolsonaro said in Portuguese. “I rose through democracy and I am sure that when I leave the administration it will also be in a democratic way.”

Recent polls show Bolsonaro largely trailing former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who could return to the job he held between 2003-2010.

The nature of democracy itself became a sticking point when planning the guest list for the summit. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador wanted the leaders of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua to be invited, but the U.S. resisted because it considers them authoritarians.

Ultimately an agreement could not be reached, and López Obrador decided not to attend. Neither did the presidents of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Biden addressed the issue only briefly on Thursday. Asked by reporters if he was concerned by the boycotts, he offered an emphatic “no.”

The controversy is a reminder that relations with Latin America have proved tricky for the administration even as it solidifies ties in Europe, where Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted closer cooperation, and in Asia, where China’s rising influence has rattled some countries in the region.

One challenge is the unmistakable power imbalance in the hemisphere.
World Bank data shows that the U.S. economy is more than 14 times the size of Brazil, the next-largest economy at the summit. The sanctions the U.S. and its allies levied against Russia are much harder in Brazil, which imports fertilizer from Russia. Trade data indicates the region has deepening ties with China, which has also made investments.

This leaves the U.S. in a position of showing Latin America why a tighter relationship with Washington would be more beneficial at a time when economies are still struggling to emerge from the pandemic and inflation has worsened conditions.

One example of that came when Harris met with Caribbean leaders to talk about clean energy and climate change.

Biden dropped by the meeting to make his own pitch for closer ties.

“This is a partnership,” he said. “We’re not here to dictate. We’re here to learn.”
___
Boak reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Debora Alvares in Brasilia, Brazil, Mauricio Savarese in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Rob Gillies in Toronto, Canada, and Elliot Spagat in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

 

[Melodi]

One quick note, unlike a lot of economic migrants, the Venezuelans who said their home is Paradise and they hope things will change so they can go home are probably telling the truth.

Venezuela was a wonderful place to live if you had a decent job and salary in the 1970s, I remember being shocked at the wonderful supermarkets and abundance of things you could buy there and the weather was amazing. I've written before about how there were already signs of decline (mostly monetary) and there was a class of people that Chavez was able to depend on who had little or nothing.

But there are a lot of very poor and marginal people in the US too (or Ireland for that matter), as a culture people were friendly, outgoing, musical, and, accepting. Every culture has its ups and downs, good sides and bad sides - but overall, it was a place I could have spent my life in (and thought I would be doing so) if it hadn't been for the horrific economic collapse and political chaos of the last twenty plus years.

Many of my English Language students in the 1970s could have stayed in the US but choose to go home because they liked it there and wanted to help build their future. A lot of them sadly were in that first or second wave to get out when things turned bad - they didn't have much choice, but they didn't leave because they wanted a "new life" in the US, they left because to stay my mean death for themselves and their families. That is what a REAL refugee is, though today economics plays a role as well, with so much of the population experiencing starvation and the return of old disease.

 

[Zagdid]

Nicaragua authorizes entry of Russian troops, planes, ships

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has authorized Russian troops, planes and ships to deploy to Nicaragua for purposes of training, law enforcement or emergency

www.city-sentinel.com

Nicaragua authorizes entry of Russian troops, planes, ships

• Associated Press The Oklahoma City Sentinel
• Jun 10, 2022 Updated 2 hrs ago

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has authorized Russian troops, planes and ships to deploy to Nicaragua for purposes of training, law enforcement or emergency response.

In a decree published this week, and confirmed by Russia on Thursday, Ortega will allow Russian troops to carry out law enforcement duties, "humanitarian aid, rescue and search missions in emergencies or natural disasters."
The Nicaraguan government also authorized the presence of small contingents of Russian troops for "exchange of experiences and training."

Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, told the Russian news outlet Sputnik that the measure was "routine."

"We are talking about a routine — twice a year — procedure for the adoption of a Nicaraguan law on the temporary admission of foreign military personnel to its territory in order to develop cooperation in various areas, including humanitarian and emergency responses, combatting organized crime and drug trafficking," Zakharova said.

She noted the law also authorizes troops from the United States, Mexico and other Central American countries for such purposes.

Ortega has been a staunch ally of Russia since his days in the leadership of the 1979 revolution that ousted dictator Anastasio Somoza. Ortega served as president from 1985 to 1990, before being re-elected to power in 2007.

Ortega's government arrested dozens of political opposition leaders, including most of the potential presidential candidates, in the months before his re-election to a fourth consecutive term last year. His government has shut down dozens of nongovernmental groups that he accuses of working on behalf of foreign interests to destabilize his government. Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans have been chased into exile.

 

[Plain Jane]

Bolivia: Former President Anez handed 10-year prison term – DW – 06/11/2022

Anez was convicted for "decisions contrary to the constitution" and "of derelicition of duty," according to a Bolivian court. She defended her actions following the resignation of predecessor Evo Morales.

www.dw.com

Bolivia: Former President Anez handed 10-year prison term
Anez was convicted for "decisions contrary to the constitution" and "of derelicition of duty," according to a Bolivian court. She defended her actions following the resignation of predecessor Evo Morales.




Anez has been accused of serious human rights violations during her tenure as interim president

A Bolivian court on Friday found former President Jeanine Anez guilty of mounting a coup in 2019.

Anez was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The 54-year-old has been convicted of making "decisions contrary to the constitution" and "of dereliction of duty."

Prosecutors said Anez violated norms that guaranteed the constitutional and democratic order after Bolivia's 2019 presidential elections.

Anez, then the most senior member of the country's parliament, ascended to the presidency after President Evo Morales resigned in 2019.

Morales, who ruled Bolivia for nearly 14 years by then, resigned after the military called on him to go following a disputed election result in October 2019.

Anez detained since 2021
Anez, who has been detained since March 2021 on initial charges of terrorism, sedition and conspiracy, was not allowed to attend the trial in person.

She followed the hearing from prison.

"I didn't lift a finger to become president, but I did what I had to do," Anez said in her final statement to the judge.

President Jeanine Anez waves to her supporters from jail, August 2021

"I assumed the presidency out of obligation, according to what is established in the constitution," Anez added.

Experts have raised concerns about the trial turning into a game of political score-settling between rival parties, with Cesar Munoz, a senior researcher at the Human Rights Watch saying they "were concerned about how this case has been pursued."

Munoz added that they "call on superior courts to examine how the processings were conducted."

Bolivia's political crisis of 2019
Large demonstrations rocked Bolivia in 2019 after protesters accused socialist leader Evo Morales of rigging elections to secure a fourth term, in defiance of term limits.

Morales, on the other hand, leveled criticism against a "civic coup" that led to his resignation in November 2019, just after the presidential election of October 2019.

Anez, a conservative and then vice president of the Senate, took power two days after Morales resigned, based on the constitutional line of succession.

Morales's leftist party, Movement for Socialism (MAS), boycotted the naming of Anez, with Morales fleeing to Mexico for safety.



Watch video02:25
Marching for Morales: The Red Ponchos
Anez said her goal was to help the country hold new and transparent elections and that she would not run for president, angering people when she announced her bid in January 2020.
Anez also drew widespread criticism for protests that followed immediately after she took power, where 20 supporters of Morales were killed. The OAS accused Bolivian security forces of carrying out a massacre during the social unrest.

Morales' MAS party, which returned to power in 2020, then accused Anez of playing a key role in what it claimed was a coup against Morales.
jsi, rm/wd (AFP, Reuters)

 

[Plain Jane]

Iran and Venezuela sign 20-year cooperation deal – DW – 06/11/2022

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his Iranian counterpart, Ebrahim Raisi, made the announcement at a joint press conference in Tehran. The two allies have both been heavily hit by US sanctions.

www.dw.com

Sanctions-hit Iran and Venezuela sign 20-year cooperation agreement
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his Iranian counterpart, Ebrahim Raisi, made the announcement at a joint press conference in Tehran. The two allies have both been heavily hit by US sanctions.




The agreement focuses on the energy and financial sectors as well as collaboration on defense projects

Venezuela signed a 20-year cooperation agreement with Iran Saturday, a day after President Nicolas Maduro praised the Islamic Republic for sending badly needed fuel to his country.
The accord comes as the two countries, among the world's top oil producers, grapple with US sanctions that are crippling their exports.

Maduro said, alongside Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, that the cooperation would include the energy and financial sectors as well as a collaboration on "defense projects."

Raisi: Venezuela's 'determination to resist sanctions a good sign'
The arrangement "shows the determination of the high-level officials of the two countries for development of relations in different fields," Raisi said at the joint news conference in Tehran. "Venezuela has passed hard years but the determination of the people, the officials and the president of the country was that they should resist the sanctions."


Watch video01:56
Venezuela curbs hyperinflation as dollar use grows
"This is a good sign that proves to everyone that resistance will work and will force the enemy to retreat," the Iranian president added.

In addition to the 20-year accord inked by the two countries, "Iran and Venezuela signed documents on cooperation in the political, cultural, tourism, economic, oil and petrochemical fields," state news agency IRNA said.

Maduro said: "We have important projects of cooperation between Iran and Venezuela in the fields of energy, petrochemical, oil, gas and refineries."

Maduro: Caracas to Tehran direct flights 'to promote tourism'
From July 18, direct flights will begin operating between Caracas and Tehran "in order to promote tourism and the union between our countries," he said, adding that "Venezuela is open to receive tourists from Iran."

Maduro is on a Eurasia tour after President Joe Biden chose not to invite him to the Summit of the Americas. Before arriving in Iran, he was in Algeria and Turkey.


Watch video03:04
Iran: Low expectations on nuclear talks
jsi/kb (EFE, AP, AFP, Reuters)

 

[Zagdid]

New hard to detect malware attacks discovered on Linux-based systems

Intezer's Joakim Kennedy and the Blackberry Research and Intelligence Team discovered that the threat presents as a shared object library (SO) rather than a typical executable file...

www.techspot.com

New hard to detect malware attacks discovered on Linux-based systems
Researchers describe the vulnerability as nearly impossible to detect
By Jimmy Pezzone Today 8:47 AM

Why it matters: Earlier this week, researchers from Blackberry and Intezer released information on a hard-to-detect Linux malware targeting Latin American financial institutions. Known as Symbiote, the threat provides unauthorized users with the ability to harvest credentials or assume remote access to the target machine. Once infected, all malware is hidden and rendered undetectable.

Intezer's Joakim Kennedy and the Blackberry Research and Intelligence Team discovered that the threat presents as a shared object library (SO) rather than a typical executable file that users must run to infect a host. Once infected, the SO is loaded into currently running processes on the target machine.

The infected computers provide threat actors with the ability to harvest credentials, leverage remote access capabilities, and execute commands with otherwise unauthorized elevated privileges. The malware is loaded before any other shared objects via the LD_PRELOAD directive, allowing it to avoid detection. Being loaded first also allows the malware to leverage other loaded library files.

In addition to the actions described above, Symbiote can hide the infected machine's network activity by creating specific temp files, hijacking infected packet filtering bytecode, or filtering UDP traffic using specific package capture functions. The Blackberry and Intezer blogs provide in-depth explanations of each method if you're into the technical details.

The team first detected the threat in Latin American-based financial institutions in 2021. Since then, the team has determined that the malware shares no code with any other known malware, classifying it as a completely new malware threat to Linux operating systems. While the new threat is designed to be hard to find, admins can use network telemetry to detect anomalous DNS requests. Security analysts and system administrators can also use statically linked antivirus (AV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools to ensure userland level rootkits do not infect target machines.

 

[Zagdid]

Argentina seizes Iranian Mahan Air aircraft, confiscates passports

At least some of the five Iranian passengers who had their passports confiscated are suspected of ties to the IRGC.

www.jpost.com

Argentina seizes Iranian Mahan Air aircraft, confiscates passports
At least some of the five Iranian passengers who had their passports confiscated are suspected of ties to the IRGC.
By ARIELLA MARSDEN

Published: JUNE 12, 2022 09:15
Updated: JUNE 12, 2022 12:10

Argentina immobilized an Iranian Mahan Air cargo plane on Sunday that was leased to a Venezuelan state-owned airline, according to Iranian media and confirmed by Argentine Security Minister Fernandez Anibal.

The flight was en route from Mexico and landed in Argentina on Sunday.

Confiscated passports
The passports of five Iranian passengers traveling on the plane were confiscated, some of whom are allegedly linked to the IRGC, according to Iran International, a Saudi-sponsored, London-based Iranian news television station.

The five passengers were identified as Mohammad Khosravi Aragh, Gholamreza Ghasemi, Mahdi Mouseli, Saeid Valizadeh and Abdolbaset Mohammadi.

The US imposed sanctions on Mahan Air after it suspected that it was providing support to the IRGC.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is currently visiting Iran, and the two nations signed a 20-year cooperation deal on Saturday.

This is a developing story.

more:

A Venezuelan Boeing 747, An Iranian Crew, All Stuck In Argentina... What's Going On?

Emtrasur's Boeing 747 landed in Argentina on June 6. It has not been able to leave the country ever since.

simpleflying.com

A Venezuelan Boeing 747, An Iranian Crew, All Stuck In Argentina... What's Going On?
BYDANIEL MARTÍNEZ GARBUNO
PUBLISHED 16 HOURS AGO
Emtrasur's Boeing 747 landed in Argentina on June 6. It has not been able to leave the country ever since.

Earlier this month, Emtrasur’s Boeing 747-300M landed at Ezeiza International Airport (EZE) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Onboard were nine Venezuelan and seven Iranian crew members, which quickly raised some questions among the airport authorities. Since June 6, the aircraft and crew have been grounded in Argentina, unable to fly back to Venezuela. What is going on? Let’s investigate further.

A bit of context
So, to tell this story, we need a bit of context. Emtrasur is a cargo airline, a branch of Venezuela’s State carrier, Conviasa. This freighter operator possesses only one aircraft, a Boeing 747-300M registration YV3531.

Emtrasur received this plane earlier this year after a stint as an aircraft for the Iranian carrier Mahan Air. It is the first of possibly three Boeing 747s that Emtrasur will acquire from Mahan Air, according to local media outlets. At the moment, Conviasa is seeking pilots for its Boeing 747.

Since acquiring the aircraft, Emtrasur has been operating cargo flights across the world. According to data by FlightRadar24.com, this Boeing 747-300M has been in airports like Querétaro and Toluca (Mexico), Belgrade (Serbia), Moscow (Russia), Oranjestad (Aruba), Minsk (Belarus), and Ciudad del Este (Paraguay).

It was in Paraguay where the questions regarding the operations of this aircraft began. On May 13, Emtrasur operated a flight to Ciudad del Este and landed with 18 people onboard, seven Iranian citizens and 11 Venezuelans. In an interview with a local radio station, Douglas Cubilla, a senior member of Paraguay’s civil aviation authorities, said,

“The company declared that (amount of crew members) when cargo aircraft always carry between six and seven members in reality. It raised some questions that more people were onboard, but they declared that number, and we can’t intervene. They declare a certain amount of crew members, and they have their reasons to do it.”

This Emtrasur's Boeing 747 is currently grounded in Venezuela. Photo: Venezuela's Embassy in Belarus .

So what happened?
A month later, on June 6, the aircraft departed Mexico en route to Buenos Aires via Caracas. Due to bad weather, the plane diverted to Córdoba, only to operate the short flight between Córdoba and Buenos Aires a bit later. That’s when the controversy began.

According to certain Argentine politicians, Emtrasur’s Boeing 747 flew between Córdoba and Buenos Aires with its transponder turned off.

On Twitter, Gerardo Milman, a deputy member of an opposition party of the current government, asked the authorities to provide information regarding the “anomalous behavior” from the aircraft, which overflew Argentina’s airspace without wanting to be tracked.

The aircraft landed in Ezeiza without a further problem, and the authorities reviewed the cargo without finding anything suspicious. Nonetheless, some of the Iranian crew members are suspected to be connected with the Quds Force, according to the Argentine newspaper Perfil.

On June 8, Emtrasur attempted to fly away from Buenos Aires, only to come back a few minutes later. The aircraft has been stranded ever since. Photo: FlightRadar24.com.

Stranded in Argentina
Emtrasur’s 747 was scheduled to leave Buenos Aires on June 8. According to FlightRadar, the aircraft left Ezeiza at around 17:48 UTC, only to return to the airport about half an hour later.

The reasons for their return to Buenos Aires are currently unknown. Both the aircraft and the crew have been stranded in Argentina ever since.

According to local media outlet Aviacionline, none of the crew members are detained and are free to leave the country at their will. The aircraft is the problem, though. Apparently, not a single company or the government wants to take care of Emtrasur’s Boeing 747, and provide it with fuel or assistance, as they fear they could face sanctions from the US government, due to its apparent links to the Iranian regime and former operator, Mahan Air.

Mahan Air is an airline that has been flagged by the US Department of the Treasury as a “tool to spread (Iran’s) destabilizing agenda around the world, including to the corrupt regimes in Syria and Venezuela, as well as terrorist groups throughout the Middle East.”

Source: El Clarín, Perfil, Aviacionline, FlightRadar24.com.

 

[Plain Jane]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Russian Army Will Be Deploying To Nicaragua For 'Humanitarian Operations'

BY TYLER DURDEN
MONDAY, JUN 13, 2022 - 04:15 AM
Is this the beginning of a Red Dawn scenario? Probably not. The US has already suffered a communist invasion from within. But, the recent announcement by Daniel Ortega, the president of Nicaragua, that he will be allowing Russian troops, ships and planes into the region for humanitarian operations will certainly upset the current mainstream narrative that Russia has been "isolated" from the rest of the world by Western sanctions.

Though the Kremlin has dismissed concerns over military deployment in Central America, saying it is 'routine', it is not supposed to be routine post Ukraine invasion. Nicaraguan state television suggested that:

'If U.S. missile systems can almost reach Moscow from Ukrainian territory, it is time for Russia to deploy something powerful closer to U.S. cities...'

The media and Joe Biden have been telling the public that Russia is on its last leg economically and that the rest of the world is shunning the Kremlin as an "evil genocidal regime." Apparently this was an exaggeration.



China, India, Brazil and South Africa among other nations have continued steady trade with Russia despite US and EU sanctions. Both China and India have increased purchases of Russian oil while removing the dollar as the common currency mechanism. The country is facing economic uncertainty after being removed from the SWIFT transaction system and as Western corporations stop business activity. However, Russia's currency remains healthy and intact after the Russian central bank tied the Ruble loosely to gold and oil purchases for a short period, and after Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that Putin was "discussing" the possibility of a Gold/Ruble peg. International trade does not seem to be slowing down and some sectors of the Russian economy are actually enjoying a boom while tax revenues are increasing.

Overall, it would seem that NATO sanctions are a failure. Putting salt on the wound, Nicaragua is now opening its territory to Russian military operations. Russian troops in Central America and heavy trade with Brazil does suggest the possibility that more nations within the Americas will expand relations with the Kremlin in the future, especially as the current inflationary crisis continues. The bizarre attempt at an international "cancel culture" event in response to the Ukraine war has hit a wall called "reality" - Economic concerns always trump social politics.

 

[Plain Jane]

Brazil police deny UK journalist, colleague's bodies found – DW – 06/13/2022

The remains of UK journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira have been found in the Amazon jungle, according to a report. However, federal police deny that the bodies had been found and identified.

www.dw.com

Brazil police deny UK journalist, colleague's bodies found
The remains of UK journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira have been found in the Amazon jungle, according to a report. However, federal police deny that the bodies had been found and identified.




The pair went missing after departing on a journey that was only supposed to take two hours

Brazil's federal police on Monday denied a report that British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira had been found and identified.

Dom Philips, who has worked for news outlets including DW and the Guardian, and his colleague have been missing for more than a week in the Vale do Javari Indigenous Land, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas.

What do we know at present?
The news outlet G1 earlier cited Philips' wife Alessandra Sampaio saying she had been told that the bodies had been found. The information has not yet been confirmed by the Brazilian authorities. The Federal Police have said that only biological material and belongings of the missing men have been discovered so far.

Meanwhile, the indigenous association UNIVAJA also told the Reuters news agency that search teams had not found any bodies.

The two men had been seen for the last time on June 5 when they arrived at the community of Sao Rafael. From there, they departed for Atalaia do Norte, a trip that takes approximately two hours, but did not reach their destination.

Clothing belonging to Pereira had been found on Sunday, along with a health identification card in his name. A backpack with clothes belonging to Phillips, along with the boots of both men, were also discovered.



Watch video02:01
Brazilian authorities find belongings of missing journalist and companion
The items were found by a creek off a river where the two men had been seen previously.
They were on a reporting trip to Vale do Javari, which is near Brazil's borders with Peru and Colombia and is home to the world's largest concentration of uncontacted indigenous people.

The remote and lawless region has enticed cocaine-smuggling gangs, as well as illegal loggers, miners, and hunters.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said human remains had been found in the search, and suggested they belonged to the pair.
"The evidence leads us to believe something bad was done to them," he said.

The Brazilian president last year faced tough questioning from Phillips at news conferences about weakening environmental law enforcement. Bolsonaro last week said the two men "were on an adventure that is not recommended."
Edited by: Wesley Dockery

 

[Plain Jane]

Brazil police make second arrest in Amazon disappearance – DW – 06/15/2022

Brazilian police arrested a fisherman, who is the brother of the prime suspect, in the case of the disappearance of Bruno Pereira and Dom Philips. The search for the two is still ongoing.

www.dw.com

Brazil: Police make second arrest in connection with missing pair in Amazon
Brazilian police arrested a fisherman, who is the brother of the prime suspect, in the case of the disappearance of Bruno Pereira and Dom Philips. The search for the two is still ongoing.




Federal officers have found personal items during their search.

Brazil's federal police said Tuesday they arrested a second suspect in connection with the disappearance of Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Philips in a remote area of the Amazon.

The suspect, Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, is a fisherman. He is also the brother of the prime suspect in the case, Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, nicknamed "Pelado." Both are aged 41.
The police also said they recovered ammunition and an oar.

On Friday, Oseney told AP agency that he had visited Pelado in jail and was told that local police had tortured him.


Watch video02:01
Brazilian authorities find belongings of missing journalist and companion
Indigenous people who were with Philips and Pereira said Pelado had brandished a rifle at the two men, shortly before they went missing. Witnesses said they saw Peraldo pass at high speed onboard a boat going in the same direction as the boat in which Phillips and Pereira were traveling.

Peraldo's boat has been seized, and traces of blood on the boat are being analyzed. Personal belongings of the two missing men were found underwater near the home of Pelado.

Pereira, 41, and Phillips, 57, were last seen June 5 near the entrance of the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory, which borders Peru and Colombia.

Search continues
Authorities had found a backpack, laptop, and other objects submerged in a river on Sunday. However, police on Monday dismissed media reports that the body of the two men had been found. The search is still ongoing.

In a letter addressed to the Phillips family, seen by Reuters agency, the Brazilian ambassador in London apologized on Tuesday for passing on incorrect information that bodies had been discovered.
"We understand that we are heading toward the end. The search area has been further reduced," said Eliesio Marubo, a lawyer for Indigenous group Univaja.

Authorities had opened a larger channel in the brush leading to the creek where the belongings were found, allowing for bigger boats to gain access to expand the search, a witness told Reuters.

The pair's disappearance has caused global consternation, with activists, advocates, and environmentalists urging Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to step up the search.

Indigenous protesters, carrying banners depicting the faces of the two men, walked to Brazil's Ministry of Justice in capital Brasilia on Tuesday to demand answers.

Bolsonaro said last week that the two men "were on an adventure that is not recommended" and speculated they could have been executed.
tg/jcg (AFP, AP, Reuters)

 

[Plain Jane]

Colombia elections: Court orders rivals to debate – DW – 06/16/2022

Colombians will choose between construction magnate Rodolfo Hernandez and former guerilla Gustavo Petro in the upcoming presidential election on June 19. But Hernandez had so far refused to debate Petro.

www.dw.com

Colombia elections: Court orders presidential rivals to debate
Colombians will choose between construction magnate Rodolfo Hernandez and former guerilla Gustavo Petro, in the upcoming presidential election on June 19. But Hernandez had so far refused to debate Petro.




A court has ordered the two candidates to hold a debate.

The Bogota High Court ruled on Wednesday that the two candidates in Colombia's presidential runoff must hold a debate, to be broadcast on public TV and radio, by Thursday at the latest.

Colombians are set to go to the polls this Sunday, to choose between millionaire Rodolfo Hernandez and his leftist rival Gustavo Petro.

Petro, a senator and former guerrilla hoping to become Colombia's first-ever leftist president, said on Wednesday he was "ready" to debate, but Hernandez has not commented on the court order.

The court ruled in favor of a group of lawyers seeking to force Hernandez to debate Petro, saying that while public debates were "a right of the candidate" to get their ideas across, "but at the same time a duty" to the public.

Opinion polls showed the two men to be in a very close race for the presidency. Hernandez reached 48.2% of the vote preference, and Petro scored 47.2%.

For the first time, two black Colombian women are standing as running mates. Leftist Francia Marquez is running alongside Petro, while Luis Gilberto Murillo is running with Hernandez.

Both are environmental activists and represent the poorest, most remote and neglected regions wracked by violence.

Who are the two candidates
Construction magnate Hernandez of the of the Anti-Corruption Rulers' League Party came in surprise second place in a first election round on May 29. This denied frontrunner and former guerilla Petro an outright win.

Hernandez, 77, has consistently refused to address public gatherings or take part in debates, preferring to address supporters directly on Facebook or TikTok.

"Win or lose, I will accept the result without hesitation, he said via social media.

Hernandez is campaigning against corruption to boost economic growth and finance programs focused on reducing poverty and inequality, generating employment, as well as improving education, health and housing for the poor.

Petro, an economist, proposes major economic and social changes. Some of his initiatives, like suspending new oil exploration contracts, reforming the pension system, ending tax exemptions and raising taxes on the richest, have caused concern among oil companies and miners.

The 62-year-old former guerrilla member had also skipped some debates ahead of the first round of voting in May as a protest against what he claimed was alleged electoral fraud in the March legislative elections.

If he wins, he could become Colombia's first leftist president.

Last week, Petro warned of possible election fraud in an interview with Reuters and said that if evidence of such activity was handed to his campaign team, he would denounce it.

Police on high alert
Colombian police are on maximum alert for potential political violence, after plans by radical groups to reject the outcome of the June 19 election were deected.

The plans were detected on social media as well as the deep web and dark web in posts published by fake or anonymous accounts, General Luis Vargas said.

"The national police is prepared with all of its capabilities," he said.

Police said they have carried out 57 operations so far, capturing 267 members of radical groups, including some linked to looting and vandalism carried out during large-scale anti-government protests last year.

A dozen retired and active officers from Colombia's armed forces said they were worried about significant changes if Petro wins the presidency.

The officials, who refused to be named, said any major changes could affect the Latin American country's international cooperation against cocaine production.
tg/jcg (AP, Reuters)

 

[Plain Jane]

Police: Amazon fisherman confesses to killing missing men

Brazilian authorities say a fisherman confessed to killing a British journalist and an Indigenous expert in Brazil’s remote Amazon region and took police to a site where human remains were recovered.

apnews.com

https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-brazil-fish-arrests-f5290b6c4fd0155ee38f98fcb07165a0#

Police: Amazon fisherman confesses to killing missing men
By FABIANNO MAISONNAVE, EDMAR BARROS and MAURICIO SAVARESEtoday



1 of 13
Federal police officers arrive with recovered human remains believed to be of the Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira of Brazil and freelance reporter Dom Phillips of Britain, at the Federal Police hangar in Brasília, Brazil, Thursday,, June 16, 2022. A federal police investigator said a suspect confessed to fatally shooting Pereira and Phillips in a remote part of the Amazon and took officers to where the bodies were buried. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

MANAUS, Brazil (AP) — A fisherman confessed to killing a British journalist and an Indigenous expert in Brazil’s remote Amazon region and took police to a site where human remains were recovered, a federal investigator said after a grim 10-day search for the missing pair.

Authorities said they expected to make more arrests in the case of freelance reporter Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira of Brazil, who disappeared June 5. None had been made as of Thursday, but police said a search for the boat the two had used was restarting.

They gave no immediate explanation of a motive for the killing, but officials earlier suggested that Pereira’s work to stop illegal fishing in an Indigenous reserve had angered local fishermen.

Two federal police officials in the capital, Brasilia, told The Associated Press on Thursday that a total of five people were being investigated, including the fisherman who confessed and his brother who was detained Tuesday as a suspect. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation, provided no further details.


At a news conference Wednesday night in the Amazon city of Manaus, federal police investigator Eduardo Alexandre Fontes said the prime suspect in the case, 41-year-old Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, told officers he used a firearm to kill the men.

“We would have no way of getting to that spot quickly without the confession,” Torres said of the place where police recovered human remains Wednesday after being led there by de Oliveira, who is nicknamed “Pelado.”

“We found the bodies 3 kilometers (nearly 2 miles) into the woods,” the investigator said, adding that officers traveled about one hour and forty minutes by boat and 25 more into the woods to reach the burial spot.

Torres said the remains were expected to be identified within days, and if confirmed as the missing men, “will be returned to the families of the two.” A federal police plane flew the remains into Brasilia on Thursday evening, and officials said testing would begin Friday.

The suspect’s family had said previously that he denied any wrongdoing and claimed police tortured him to try to get a confession.

View attachment 1655460083812.png

Another officer, Guilherme Torres of the Amazonas state police, said the missing men’s boat had not been found yet but police knew the area where it purportedly was hidden.

“They put bags of dirt on the boat so it would sink,” he said. The engine of the boat was removed, according to investigators.

Pereira had been on leave from Brazil’s National Indian Foundation, the government agency in charge of protecting Indigenous people.

He “leaves an immense legacy for the policies of protection of uncontacted and recently contacted Indigenous peoples,” the agency, known as FUNAI, said in a statement, calling him “one of the country’s main experts” on the issue.

“He was considered to be a reference for colleagues and Indigenous peoples, with whom he built a friendship relationship over the years.”

President Jair Bolsonaro sent a tweet Thursday saying, “Our condolences to family members and may God comfort everyone’s heart.

Bolsonaro has been a frequent critic both of journalists and Indigenous experts and his government was accused of being slow to act in the disappearances. Before the bodies were discovered on Wednesday, he criticized Phillips in an interview, saying that locals in the area where he went missing didn’t like him and that he should have been more careful in the region.


UNIVAJA, an association of Indigenous peoples of the Javari Valley, mourned the loss of “two partners” in a statement Wednesday, adding they only had help and protection from local police.

Pereira, 41, and Phillips, 57, were last seen on their boat in a river near the entrance of the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory, which borders Peru and Colombia. That area has seen violent conflicts between fishermen, poachers and government agents.

Indigenous people who were with Pereira and Phillips have said that Pelado brandished a rifle at them on the day before the pair disappeared.

On Sunday, searchers found a backpack, laptop and other personal belongings submerged underwater in the Itaquai river. The find was near a spot where a day earlier volunteers from the Matis Indigenous group found a tarp from the missing men’s boat.


Officials previously reported finding traces of blood in Pelado’s boat. The federal police said Thursday analysis of the blood showed it wasn’t from Phillips but the tests were “inconclusive” concerning Pereira. It said further tests would be conducted.

Authorities have said a main line of investigation has pointed to an international network that pays poor fishermen to fish illegally in the Javari Valley reserve, which is Brazil’s second-largest Indigenous territory.

Pereira, who previously led FUNAI’s local office in the region, had taken part in several operations against illegal fishing. which usually lead to seizure of fishing gear and fines for violators. Only the Indigenous can legally fish in their territories.

But police have not ruled out other motives, such as drug trafficking.

Phillips’ wife, Alessandra Sampaio, said late Wednesday that the discovery of bodies “puts an end to the anguish of not knowing Dom and Bruno’s whereabouts.”

“Now we can bring them home and say goodbye with love,” Sampaio said in a statement. ”Today, we also begin our quest for justice.”

Pereira’s wife, Beatriz Matos, expressed her grief ohursday.

“Now that Bruno’s spirits are strolling in the forest and spread on us, our strength is much bigger,” she said on Twitter.
___
Savarese reported from Sao Paulo.
___
Associated Press writer Debora Alvares in Brasilia contributed to this report.

 

[Plain Jane]

Ecuador: State of emergency in 3 provinces amid protests – DW – 06/18/2022

Ecuador's president has declared a state of emergency in three provinces, including capital Quito, in response to protests by Indigenous people over fuel prices.

www.dw.com

Ecuador: State of emergency declared in three provinces amid Indigenous protests
Ecuador's president has declared a state of emergency in three provinces, including capital Quito, in response to protests by Indigenous people over fuel prices.




Riot police disperse demonstrators with tear gas during indigenous-led protests in Quito

Ecuador's President Guillermo Lasso has declared a state of emergency in three provinces where recent anti-government protests by Indigenous people have been concentrated.

"I am committed to defending our capital and our country," Lasso said on television late Friday.

Capital Quito is among the three provinces.

On Monday,Indigenous people launched an open-ended demonstration against the government demanding cuts in fuel prices.

Students, workers and other supporters have also joined the protests.

Roads across the country, including highways to Quito, have been blockaded by the protesters.

At least 43 people have been injured in clashes with security forces.

The state of emergency allows the president to call out the armed forces to maintain order, suspend civil rights and declare curfews.

What are the protests about?
Oil producer Ecuador has been marred by increasing inflation, unemployment and poverty augmented by the coronavirus pandemic.

Fuel prices in Ecuador have seen a sharp spike since 2020, almost doubling for diesel from $1 (€0.95) to $1.90 per gallon (3.8 liters) while petrol has risen from $1.75 to $2.55.

The powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie), which was instrumental in toppling three Ecuadorian presidents between 1997 and 2005, has called for the protests.

Conaie has said it would continue the blockades until the government meets a list of 10 demands.

The organization wants the fuel rates to be slashed to $1.50 for diesel and $2.10 for petrol, a demand that the government has rejected so far.

Food price controls and renegotiating the personal bank loans of nearly four million families are some of the other demands put forth by Conaie.



Watch video01:25
Oil spill in Ecuador's Amazon endangers Indigenous water supply
How has the president responded?
While declaring the state of emergency on Friday, Lasso also tried to ease grassroots anger by announcing new measures.

He announced an increase in the value of a state bond given to the country's poorest and also a program to ease the debt of those who have loans from state-run banks.

Lasso, who has been in power for a year now, had met with Indigenous leaders on Thursday in an attempt to dissuade tensions but the talks appeared to yield nothing.
dvv/aw (AFP, EFE)

 

[Plain Jane]

Brazil Indigenous expert was 'bigger target' in recent years

SAO PAULO (AP) — Before disappearing in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, Bruno Pereira was laying the groundwork for a mammoth undertaking: a 350-kilometer (217-mile) trail marking the southwestern border of the Javari Valley Indigenous territory, an area the size of Portugal.

apnews.com

https://apnews.com/article/jair-bol...environment-3b0923d31ff9a054990dc06e895594ac#

Brazil Indigenous expert was ‘bigger target’ in recent years
By MAURICIO SAVARESE and FABIANO MAISONNAVEyesterday



1 of 12
Indigenous leader Kamuu Wapichana is backdropped by a banner that show images of missing freelance British journalist Dom Phillips, left, and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, during a protest asking authorities to expand the search efforts for the two men, in front of the Ministry of Justice in Brasilia, Brazil, Tuesday, June 14, 2022. The search for Pereira and Phillips, who disappeared in a remote area of Brazil’s Amazon continued following the discovery of a backpack, laptop and other personal belongings submerged in a river. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

SAO PAULO (AP) — Before disappearing in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, Bruno Pereira was laying the groundwork for a mammoth undertaking: a 350-kilometer (217-mile) trail marking the southwestern border of the Javari Valley Indigenous territory, an area the size of Portugal.

The purpose of the trail is to prevent cattle farmers from encroaching on Javari territory — and it was just the latest effort by Pereira to help Indigenous people protect their natural resources and traditional lifestyles.

While Pereira had long pursued these goals as an expert at the Brazilian Indigenous affairs agency, known as FUNAI, he worked in recent years as a consultant to the Javari Valley’s Indigenous organization. That’s because after Jair Bolsonaro became Brazil’s president in 2019, FUNAI began taking a more hands-off approach toward protecting Indigenous land and people — and the government unapologetically promoted development over environmental protection.

Deeply frustrated, Pereira left the agency and embarked on a more independent -- and dangerous -- path.

He was last seen alive on June 5 on a boat in the Itaquai river, along with British freelance journalist Dom Phillips, near an area bordering Peru and Colombia. On Wednesday, a fisherman confessed to killing Pereira, 41, and Phillips, 57, and took police to a site where human remains were recovered; they have since been identified as the two men.

https://apnews.com/article/floods-j...-environment-d54657a2ed69f3bc8e75a828401469c3
Pereira spoke several times with The Associated Press over the past 18 months, and he talked about his decision to leave FUNAI, which he felt had become a hindrance to his work. After Bolsonaro came to power, the agency was stacked with loyalists and people who lacked experience in Indigenous affairs, he said.

“There’s no use in me being there as long as these policemen and army generals are calling the shots,” he said by phone in November. “I can’t do my work under them.

As a technical consultant for the Javari Valley’s association of Indigenous people, or Univaja, Pereira helped the group develop a surveillance program to reduce illegal fishing and hunting in a remote region belonging to 6,300 people from seven different ethnic groups, many of whom have had little to no contact with the outside world. He and three other non-Indigenous people trained Indigenous patrollers to use drones and other technology to spot illegal activity, photograph it and submit evidence to authorities.

“When it came to helping the Indigenous peoples, he did everything he could,” said Jader Marubo, former president of Univaja. “He gave his life for us.”
___
Like Pereira, Ricardo Rao was an Indigenous expert at FUNAI who, in 2019, prepared a dossier detailing illegal logging in Indigenous lands of Maranhao state. But fearful of being so outspoken under the new regime, he fled to Norway.

“I asked Norway for asylum, because I knew the men I was accusing would have access to my name and would kill me, just like what happened with Bruno,” Rao said.

Bolsonaro has repeatedly advocated tapping the vast riches of Indigenous lands, particularly their mineral resources, and integrating Indigenous people into society. He has pledged not to grant any further Indigenous land protections, and in April said he would defy a Supreme Court decision, if necessary. Those positions directly opposed Pereira’s hopes for the Javari Valley.

Before taking leave, Pereira was removed as head of FUNAI’s division for isolated and recently contacted tribes. That move came shortly after he commanded an operation that expelled hundreds of illegal gold prospectors from an Indigenous territory in Roraima state. His position was soon filled by a former Evangelical missionary with an anthropology background. The choice generated outcry because some missionary groups have openly tried to contact and convert tribes, whose voluntary isolation is protected by Brazilian law.

Key colleagues of Pereira’s at FUNAI either followed his lead and took leave, or were shuffled to bureaucratic positions far from the demarcation of protected lands, according to a recent report from the Institute of Socioeconomic Studies think tank and the nonprofit Associated Indigenists, which includes current and former FUNAI staff.

“Of FUNAI’s 39 regional coordination offices, only two are headed by FUNAI staffers,” the report says. “Seventeen military men, three policemen, two federal policemen and six professionals with no prior connection with public administration have been named” under Bolsonaro.

The 173-page report published Monday says many of the agency’s experts have been fired, unfairly investigated or discredited by its leaders while trying to protect Indigenous people.
In response to AP questions about the report’s allegations, FUNAI said in an emailed statement that it operates “with strict obedience to current legislation” and doesn’t persecute its officers.
___
On the day they went missing, Pereira and Phillips slept at an outpost at the entrance of the main clandestine route into the territory, without passing by the Indigenous agency’s permanent base at its entrance, locals told the AP.

Two Indigenous patrollers told the AP the pair had been transporting mobile phones from the surveillance project with photos of places where illegal fishermen had been. Authorities have said that an illicit fishing network is a focus of the police investigation into the killings. Police said in a statement Saturday that Pereira’s death was caused by three gunshot wounds, two to the abdomen and one to the head, with ammunition typical of hunting.


Pereira wasn’t the first person connected with FUNAI to be killed in the region. In 2019, an active FUNAI agent, Maxciel Pereira dos Santos, was shot to death as he drove his motorcycle through the city of Tabatinga. He had been threatened for his work against illegal fishermen before he was gunned down. That crime remains unsolved.

Pereira’s killing will not stop the Javari territory’s border demarcation project from moving ahead, said Manoel Chorimpa, an Univaja member involved in the project. And in another sign that Pereira’s work will endure, Indigenous patrollers’ surveillance efforts have begun leading to the investigation, arrest and prosecution of law-breakers.

Before his career at FUNAI, Pereira worked as a journalist. But his passion for Indigenous affairs and languages — he spoke four — led him to switch careers. His anthropologist wife, Beatriz Matos, encouraged him in his work, even though it meant long stretches away from their home in Atalaia do Norte, and their children. More recently, they were living in Brazil’s capital, Brasilia.

The Indigenous people of the region have mourned Pereira as a partner, and an old photo widely shared on social media in recent days shows a group of them gathered behind Pereira, shirtless, as he shows them something on his laptop. A child leans gently onto his shoulder.


In a statement on Thursday, FUNAI mourned Pereira’s death and praised his work: “The public servant leaves an enormous legacy for the isolated Indigenous people’s protection. He became one of the country’s top specialists in this issue and worked with highest commitment.”

Before the bodies were found, however, FUNAI had issued a statement implying Pereira violated procedure by overstaying his authorization inside the Javari territory. It prompted FUNAI’s rank-and-file to strike, claiming that the agency had libeled Pereira and demanding its president be fired. A court on Thursday ordered FUNAI to retract its statement that is “incompatible with the reality of the facts” and cease discrediting Pereira.

Rubens Valente, a journalist who has covered the Amazon for decades, said Pereira’s work became inherently riskier once he felt it necessary to work independently.

“Fish thieves saw Bruno as a fragile person, without the status and power that FUNAI gave him in the region where he was FUNAI coordinator for five years,” Valente said. “When the criminals noticed Bruno was weak, he became an even bigger target.”
___
Maisonnave reported from Atalaia do Norte. AP writer Débora Álvares contributed from Brasilia.
___
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

 

[Plain Jane]

Colombian ex-guerrilla leader beats millionaire – DW – 06/20/2022

Voters in Colombia decided between leftist Gustavo Petro and businessman Rodolfo Hernandez, whose sudden rise prompted comparisons with Donald Trump.

www.dw.com

Colombia elections: Ex-guerrilla leader Gustavo Petro wins
Voters in Colombia decided between leftist Gustavo Petro and businessman Rodolfo Hernandez, whose sudden rise prompted comparisons with Donald Trump.




Colombian President-Elect Gustavo Petro and his running mate Francia Marquez celebrated their victory in Bogota

Left-wing ex-guerrilla Gustavo Petro has achieved a narrow victory in Colombia's presidential election.

Polls opened for the second round of the Latin American nation's presidential election on Sunday, with former guerrilla leader Petro facing surprise rival Rodolfo Hernandez, a 77-year-old businessman who managed to build up a nationwide political following by relying on TikTok and Facebook.

The race between Petro and Hernandez was the tightest in the country in recent memory.

Gustavo Petro won Colombia's presidential election by over 700,000 votes

Petro beat Hernandez by more than 700,000 votes, becoming the South American country's first left-wing president and joining a raft of other countries on the continent that have elected left-leaning candidates.

After the results, Petro tweeted, "Today is a day of celebration for the people. Let them celebrate the first popular victory. May so many sufferings be cushioned in the joy that today floods the heart of the Homeland."

He issued a call for unity during his victory speech and extended an olive branch to some of his harshest critics.

"From this government that is beginning there will never be political persecution or legal persecution, there will only be respect and dialogue," he said, adding that he will listen to not only those who have raised arms but also to "that silent majority of peasants, Indigenous people, women, youth."

Hernandez conceded defeat in a video posted on social media.

"Colombians, today the majority of citizens have chosen the other candidate. As I said during the campaign, I accept the results of this election," Hernandez said. "I sincerely hope that this decision is beneficial for everyone."

EU, US congratulate Petro
The United States congratulated "the people of Colombia for making their voices heard in a free and fair presidential election." "We look forward to working with President-Elect Petro to further strengthen the U.S.-Colombia relationship and move our nations toward a better future," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

The EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell welcomed the result which he said had been free and fair according to the EU's monitoring mission. "The elections in Colombia mark a clear change, Colombians have been voting for political change, looking for a more inclusive and more egalitarian society ... I wish the best for the Colombian president-elect," Borrell said.
Some 39 million people were eligible to vote in Colombia, a country where nearly 40% live below the poverty line and 11% are unemployed.

With the two anti-establishment candidates vying for the presidency, Sunday's ballot was seen as a powerful rebuke to the country's conservative elite and current president, Ivan Duque.

Petro wants to 'make history'
The 62-year-old Petro, a leftist with a reform agenda, comfortably won the initial vote last month by securing some 40.4% of the ballots. The result is a sensation on its own, as a large part of Colombia's population harbors a deep distrust of both his policies and his past in the now-defunct M-19 urban rebel group, which included two years in prison on arms charges.

But his supporters point to Petro's plans to redistribute pensions, make public universities free and tackle the country's inequality and poverty. He has also said he will put a stop to new oil and gas projects.



Watch video02:13
Leftist Gustavo Petro tops Colombia vote
"We're one step from achieving the real change we have waited for all our lives," Petro said. "We are going to make history."

Hernandez banks on TikTok
Perhaps more surprising was that Petro faced Hernandez on Sunday. The former mayor of the northern city of Bucaramanga, who presents himself as a political outsider, managed to win over 28% of the initial vote and edge out conservative candidate Federico Gutierrez for a chance to go against Petro in the second round.

Moreover, Hernandez had managed to close the gap between himself and Petro in the intervening weeks. The millionaire entrepreneur relied on TikTok and Facebook to reach potential voters. His wealth and unorthodox campaign strategy has prompted comparisons with former US President Donald Trump.

Hernandez has pledged to tackle corruption, despite facing an investigation for allegedly favoring his son's company in a waste management tender during his time as mayor of Bucaramanga. He has also promised to provide free narcotics to addicts in a bid to fight drug traffickers.

"The election is simple. Vote for someone who is controlled by the same people as always or vote for me, who isn't controlled by anyone," Hernandez said ahead of Sunday's vote.

But the electorate might have taken issue with videos that recently surfaced online showing the 77-year-old partying on a private yacht with several younger women. Others might have been turned off by Hernandez's history of gaffes, most notably when he declared himself an admirer of "the great German thinker Adolf Hitler" in 2016. He later corrected himself by saying he was really talking about Albert Einstein.




Watch video06:00
Colombia's dream of lasting peace
Petro’s victory hailed
Gustavo Petro's election also sparked joy among fellow left-leaning Latin American leaders.
"Your victory validates democracy and ensures the path towards an integrated Latin America in this time when we demand maximum solidarity amongst brother peoples," said Argentina's President Alberto Fernandez on Twitter.

Chile's President Gabriel Boric said Petro's victory was a "joy for Latin America."

Peru's Pedro Castillo said he looked forward to working with an ally. "We are united by a common feeling that seeks improved collective, social and regional integration for our peoples," he said.

"Latin American integration is strengthened," added Bolivia's Luis Arce.

Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Petro's success could heal the wounds in a country in which political assassinations are not uncommon. "Today's triumph can be the end of this curse and the awakening for this brotherly and dignified people," said Lopez Obrador.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who has a fraught relationship with outgoing conservative Colombian President Ivan Duque, was jubilant. "The will of the Colombian people has been heard, it went out to defend the path to democracy and peace," he said.
Miguel Diaz-Canel, the president of Cuba, spoke of his hope for "advancing the development of bilateral relations for the wellbeing of our peoples."
ab, dj, ss, si/sri (AFP, Reuters, AP)

 

[Plain Jane]

https://apnews.com/article/politics-elections-mountains-colombia-76d3fce05f6e258892094b7292bce

https://apnews.com/article/politics-elections-mountains-colombia-76d3fce05f6e258892094b7292bcecfa#

Colombian voters elect country’s first Black vice president
By MANUEL RUEDA and ASTRID SUAREZyesterday



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Former rebel Gustavo Petro, left, his wife Veronica Alcocer, back center, and his running mate Francia Marquez, celebrate before supporters after winning a runoff presidential election in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, June 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — As Colombia’s voters put aside a longtime antipathy to leftists and chose one as their new president, they also carved out another milestone — electing the country’s first Black vice president.

When former leftist rebel Gustavo Petro takes office as president on Aug. 7, a key player in his administration will be Francia Marquez, his running mate in Sunday’s runoff election.

Marquez is an environmental activist from La Toma, a remote village surrounded by mountains where she first organized campaigns against a hydroelectric project and then challenged wildcat gold miners who were invading collectively owned Afro-Colombian lands.

The politician has faced numerous death threats for her environmental work and has emerged as a powerful spokeswoman for Black Colombians and other marginalized communities.

“She’s completely different than any another person that’s ever had a vice presidency in Colombia,” said Gimena Sanchez, the Andes director for the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.


“She comes from a rural area, she comes from the perspective of a campesino woman and from the perspective of areas of Colombia that have been affected by armed conflict for many years. Most politicians in Colombia who have held the presidency have not lived in the way she has,” Sanchez said.
https://apnews.com/article/2022-mid...nd-ethnicity-5ca4999a986fc50b88259ee0caa03943
She said Marquez will likely be given the mandate to work on gender issues as well as policies affecting the nation’s Afro-Colombian population.

In several interviews. Petro has discussed creating a Ministry of Equality, which would be headed by Marquez and would work across several sectors of the economy on issues like reducing gender inequalities and tackling disparities faced by ethnic minorities.

Marquez said Sunday that part of her mission as vice president will be to reduce inequality.
“This will be a government for those with calluses on their hands. We are here to promote social justice and to help women eradicate the patriarchy,” she said on stage while celebrating the election results with thousands of supporters at a popular concert venue.

Marquez grew up in a small home built by her family and had a daughter when she was 16, whom she raised on her own. To support her daughter, Marquez cleaned homes in the nearby city of Cali and also worked at a restaurant while studying for a law degree.

She was awarded the 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize for her successful efforts to remove gold miners from the collectively owned Afro-Colombian lands around her village.

Marquez entered the presidential race last year as a candidate for the Democratic Pole party, though she lost out in an inter-party consultation in March to Gustavo Petro. But she gained national recognition during the primaries and received 700,000 votes, topping most veteran politicians.

In speeches calling for Colombia to confront racism and gender inequalities and to ensure basic rights for the poor, Marquez energized rural voters who have suffered from the country’s long armed conflict as well as young people and women in urban areas.


“All of us who work with her now believe in the power of women,” said Vivian Tibaque, a community leader in Bogota who worked on Marquez’s campaign. “We believe we can also defend out rights like Francia has defended hers.”

Political analysts said Marquez contributed to Petro’s campaign by reaching out to voters who felt excluded by the political system but did not trust the leftist parties that Petro, a former member of a rebel group, has been a part of throughout much of his career.

They said her presence on Petro’s ticket also motivated Afro-Colombian voters along the Pacific coast, where Petro won by big margins Sunday even as he barely won the contest by three percentage points.

“I don’t think Petro could’ve won the presidency without her.” Sanchez said. “There is a lot of distrust and suspicion towards the left in Colombia, partly because a lot of the left has been armed at some point in time.”

 

[Plain Jane]

Ecuador: Clashes break out at Indigenous protests – DW – 06/21/2022

Police lobbed tear gas at hundreds of demonstrators in Quito amid Indigenous-led protests against high fuel prices. The country's defense minister described widespread road blockades as "a grave threat."

www.dw.com

Ecuador: Clashes break out at Indigenous protests
Police lobbed tear gas at hundreds of demonstrators in Quito amid Indigenous-led protests against high fuel prices. The country's defense minister described widespread road blockades as "a grave threat."




Indigenous demonstrators drive past burning road blockades while heading towards the Ecuadorian capital Quito

Police and protesters clashed in the Ecuadorian capital Quito on Tuesday, as demonstrations against the government's economic and social policies entered a ninth day.

The demonstrations are being led by Indigenous groups who have blockaded roads and appealed for fuel prices to be cut. The protesters have also urged the government to put a stop to expanding the country's oil and mining industry.

What is the latest?
Violence broke out during protests on Tuesday, as 500 protesters attempted to block a key road in the capital by burning tree branches.

Police fired tear gas in a bid to disperse the crowd.

The protesters then regrouped and marched towards the Culture Center of Ecuador in Quito. The site is usually used by Indigenous groups as a gathering point to launch demonstrations, but the building is currently being used by police as a base.

Authorities lobbed tear gas at demonstrators once more in an effort to break up the crowd. Local media also reported that some demonstrators threw stones at officers.

Police reportedly seized shields and spears carried by the protesters.

Authorities fired tear gas at Indigenous demonstrators in the Ecuadorian capital on Tuesday

An indigenous protester died in a "confrontation" with law enforcement, the leader of a human rights group told the AFP news agency.

Lawyer Lina Maria Espinosa of the Alliance for Human Rights said that the protester was hit in the face with a "tear gas bomb."

How has the government responded?
The Ecuadorian government hardened its stance against the Indigenous demonstrations on Tuesday.

Defense Minister Luis Lara said the country "faces a grave threat" from protesters who are using road blockades and "preventing the free movement of the majority of Ecuadorians."
Lara made the comments at a press conference while surrounded by the heads of Ecuador's military. He said the armed forces "will not allow attempts to break the constitutional order or any action against democracy and the laws of the republic."

Over the weekend, the government declared a state of emergency in three states over the protests.

What is the impact of the demonstrations?
The demonstrations, which began on June 13, were called by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE).

Indigenous demonstrators have barricaded roads across the nation. CONAIE said the blockades would not lift until President Guillermo Lasso's government meets the group's demands.

Protesters have called for a cut to fuel prices, a halt to the further expansion of the country's lucrative oil and mining industries, as well as more time for farmers to pay their debts.

Indigenous communities have been particularly negatively impacted by rising inflation, unemployment and economic hardships worsened by the coronavirus pandemic.
Thousands of protesters have arrived in Quito, traveling to the capital from across the country.

The road blockades have hampered production and deliveries across the Latin American nation.
rs,sdi/wd (AFP, dpa)

 

[Plain Jane]

Ecuador rejects Indigenous protesters' dialogue conditions

Violent protests by Indigenous people demanding a variety of changes, including lower fuel prices, have paralyzed Ecuador’s capital and other regions, but the government has rejected their conditions for dialogue.

apnews.com

Ecuador rejects Indigenous protesters' dialogue conditions

Ecuador rejects Indigenous protesters’ dialogue conditions
yesterday



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A demonstrator shouts during a protest in downtown Quito, Ecuador, Wednesday, June 22, 2022. Protests by Indigenous people demanding a variety of changes, including lower fuel prices, have paralyzed Ecuador's capital and other regions. (AP Photo/Juan Diego Montenegro)
QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Violent protests by Indigenous people demanding a variety of changes, including lower fuel prices, have paralyzed Ecuador’s capital and other regions, but the government on Wednesday rejected their conditions for dialogue.

Quito, the capital, is experiencing food and fuel shortages after 10 days of demonstrations in which protesters at times have clashed with police. After officials rejected the conditions for negotiations, the United States government issued an advisory urging travelers to reconsider visiting the country due to “civil unrest and crime.”

The demonstrations are part of a national strike that the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities began June 14 to demand that gasoline prices be cut by 45 cents a gallon to $2.10, price controls for agricultural products and a larger budget for education. Protests have been especially violent in six provinces in the north-central part of the South American country.


The Indigenous leader Leonidas Iza on Tuesday demanded among other things that the government eliminate the state of emergency in those provinces and remove the military and police presence around places where protesters have gathered in Quito. But the Minister of Government on Wednesday said the government could not lift the state of emergency because it would leave “the capital defenseless.”

Threats testimony rings familiar for election workers
“This is not the time to put more conditions, it is not the time to demand greater demands, it is the time to sit down and talk, we are on the tenth day of the strike,” Minister Francisco Jiménez told a television network. “And we can’t keep waiting, the capital can’t keep waiting, the country can’t keep waiting.”

The protests have been characterized by intermittent roadblocks on the main roads in the six provinces, while in the capital, groups of protesters roam the city attacking vehicles and civilians and forcing the closure of businesses, some of which were looted. They have also punctured the wheels of buses, forcing passengers to walk.

The situation prompted several embassies, including that of Germany, Britain, Canada and the U.S. to issue a public statement expressing concerns about “the fundamental rights of all citizens,” and calling for the parties to negotiate and reach “concrete agreements.”

The U.S. Department of State in Wednesday’s advisory warned travelers about widespread protests and crime in Ecuador, including the presence of international criminal organizations and gangs.

“Public demonstrations can take place for a variety of political and economic issues,” the department said. “Demonstrations can cause the shutdown of local roads and major highways, often without prior notice or estimated reopening timelines. Road closures may significantly reduce access to public transportation and airports and may disrupt travel both within and between cities.”

The United Nations and the Organization of American States are among the 300 institutions that have also called on the government and Indigenous leaders to reach an agreement at time when the country is facing a serious social, economic and political crisis.


The Minister of the Interior, Patricio Carrillo, told reporters that in the city of Puyo, in the Amazon, protesters on Tuesday attacked police and civilians “in absolutely irrational acts, with explosives, with ancestral weapons and with carbine-type firearms.”

Elsewhere, protesters also attacked the building housing the Attorney General’s Office and occupied oil fields, forcing the government to invoke contract clauses that prevent lawsuits from being filed by hydrocarbon operators over unfulfilled contracts. The country’s main export is oil.

 

[Plain Jane]

Brazil's Lula maintains wide lead over Bolsonaro – DW – 06/24/2022

Strong inflation headwinds could deny Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro a second term, with the incumbent also facing a new corruption scandal. Lula says citizens want to "get rid" of the current government.

www.dw.com

Brazil election: Lula maintains wide lead over Bolsonaro, poll says
Strong inflation headwinds could deny Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro a second term, with the incumbent also facing a new corruption scandal. Lula says citizens want to "get rid" of the current government.




Lula recently unveiled his pro-environment, anti-poverty campaign agenda

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, is maintaining his wide lead over incumbent right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro ahead of an election in October, according to a poll released Thursday.

What did the survey reveal?
The Datafolha opinion survey puts leftist Lula at 47% support, with Bolsonaro standing at 28%. Center-left candidate Ciro Gomes received 8% support.

The survey results have only changed marginally since last month, when 48% of voters had said they back Lula, with Bolsonaro garnering 27% support.

Setting aside the percentage of voters in the latest survey who said they will cast a spoiled or blank ballot, Lula would receive 53% support, with Bolsonaro garnering 32%. This would be enough for Lula to win outright in the first round of voting.

Lula has praised the poll, saying Brazilians want to "get rid" of the current government.

Bolsonaro has previously downplayed surveys showing him behind his leftist opponent.
High inflation, along with a COVID response criticized by many Brazilian voters, could deny the incumbent a second term


Watch video01:16
Rising prices not good for Bolsonaro's reelection
Bolsonaro embroiled in new corruption scandal
This week, a new corruption scandal could also imperil Bolsonaro's reelection bid.

On Thursday, Bolsonaro's education minister, Milton Ribeiro, was released after being arrested on corruption charges a day earlier.

Brazilian federal judge Ney Bello ordered the release of Ribeiro, saying the charges did not justify his pre-trial detention.

Ribeiro left his post in March after allegations that he channeled public money to the allies of two major evangelical pastors at the "special request" of Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro has described the arrest as an attempt to "wear down the government." At the same time, he has sought to distance himself from his former minister.

Ribeiro, who is also a Presbyterian pastor, has denied the charges.

Evangelical Christians are a key base of support for conservative Bolsonaro.
wd/kb (Reuters, AP, AFP)

 

[Plain Jane]

Prosecutor: 4 police, up to 8 suspects killed in west Mexico

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Four police officers were shot to death after being drawn into an ambush in western Mexico, and as many as eight suspected attackers were killed in a gunbattle with other police who rushed to the site, authorites said Thursday.

apnews.com

https://apnews.com/article/mexico-shootings-caribbean-4c47abd050163eea67a823d199982b72#

Prosecutor: 4 police, up to 8 suspects killed in west Mexico
yesterday


MEXICO CITY (AP) — Four police officers were shot to death after being drawn into an ambush in western Mexico, and as many as eight suspected attackers were killed in a gunbattle with other police who rushed to the site, authorites said Thursday.

Luis Joaquín Méndez, chief prosecutor of the western state of Jalisco, said four municipal policemen in the city of El Salto responded to a call late Wednesday about armed men at a house.

Once they arrived, a woman answered the door and told them nothing was wrong. But gunmen inside then opened fire on the officers, some of whom were dragged into the home and killed, the prosecutor said.

Gov. Enrique Alfaro wrote that police reinforcements showed up and engaged in a shootout with the suspects, killing eight and wounding three.

Later, the prosecutor’s office said nine bodies were found at the house — the four police officers and five suspected gunmen. Three more bodies — two men and a woman — were found at a property nearby, they said


Prosecutors said the dead were probably members of a gang that apparently held kidnap victims at one of the properties. Investigators also found the hacked up remains of another man in plastic bags.

Ricardo Santillán, police chief of El Salto, called the ambush “a cowardly act.”

https://apnews.com/article/inflation-middle-east-africa-56399743fe9ad28692c88c007bb901d6
The Roman Catholic Mexican Council of Bishops issued an open letter Thursday calling on the government to change course on security, commenting three days after two Jesuits priests were allegedly killed by a drug gang leader inside their church in a remote town in northern Mexico.

“It is time to revise the security policies that are failing,” the bishops wrote, calling for a “national dialogue” to find solutions.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has declared his government is no longer focused on detaining drug cartel leaders, and in 2019 he ordered the release of a captured leader of the Sinaloa cartel to avoid bloodshed.

López Obrador has implemented a strategy he calls “hugs, not bullets” and has sometimes appeared to tolerate the gangs, even praising them at one point for not interfering in elections.

Asked at his daily morning news briefing if he intended to change strategies, López Obrador said, “No, rather the reverse, this is the right path.”

He faced questions about the fact that there have been more killings in his 3 1/2 years in office than in all six years under President Felipe Calderón in 2006-2012, whom López Obrador frequently accuses of being responsible for unnecessary bloodshed.

“It’s just that we received a homicide rate that was at its peak, way up, and Calderón wasn’t handed the country like that. He ratched it up,” López Obrador said.

 

[Plain Jane]

Ecuador's president faces no-confidence vote – DW – 06/26/2022

Protests led by Indigenous groups have continued for nearly two weeks, as parliament begins a no-confidence vote against President Guillermo Lasso. The state of emergency imposed in some parts has been repealed.

www.dw.com

Ecuador: President Lasso faces no-confidence vote as protests continue
Protests led by Indigenous groups have continued for nearly two weeks, as parliament begins a no-confidence vote against President Guillermo Lasso. The state of emergency imposed in some parts has been repealed.




President Lasso held talks with Indigenous leaders who have organized the protests

After nearly two weeks of nationwide protests, Ecuador's National Assembly has begun a no-confidence hearing for President Guillermo Lasso.

The protests, led by Indigenous groups, have been sparked due to rising fuel prices and living costs.

Earlier on Saturday, Ecuador's government and Indigenous leaders met for the first formal talks since the protests began, said legislature head Virgilio Saquicela.

Demonstrations broke out on June 13 after Indigenous leaders called for lower fuel and food prices, among other demands. Around 14,000 people have since participated in the protests, which have occasionally turned violent. At least six people have died in the protests, and there have been several attacks on security forces.

The no-confidence hearing was called by 47 opposition lawmakers, who said Lasso has played a role in "the serious political crisis and internal commotion," just a year after he assumed the position of president.

Lasso is currently in isolation, after testing positive for COVID-19. His ouster would require 92 votes out of 137 in the assembly. If a no-confidence vote passes, Vice President Alfredo Borrero will assume interim power and call new presidential and legislative elections.

On Friday, Lasso accused demonstrators of attempting "a coup" after two straight days of violent clashes with police and soldiers. Protesters in Quito threw rocks and Molotov cocktails and shot off fireworks near the congress building. The security forces repelled them with tear gas.




Watch video02:17
Heightened tensions at nationwide protests in Ecuador
Why are people protesting?
The protests were called by the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador. Leader Leonidas Iza told the AFP news agency that demonstrations would continue "until we have results. We can no longer hold back the anger of the people."

Fuel production, which is Ecuador's biggest export, has been halved. The oil industry has failed to produce 1 million barrels of crude, the Energy Ministry said on Saturday, a loss of some $96 million (€90 million).

Indigenous groups have demanded a halt to oil and mining projects and demonstrators have entered flower farms and oil fields, with some facilities reporting damage to equipment.
Six of the country's 24 provinces were under a state of emergency and a night-time curfew is in place in Quito, where many business owners and workers in the capital are fed up with the disruption to their lives and livelihoods. The emergency has now ended, said an official on Saturday.

The government has rejected the protesters' demand for a fuel price cut, saying it would cost an unaffordable $1 billion per year. The International Monetary Fund on Friday approved the release of $1 billion in funding for Ecuador, to bolster economic recovery from the pandemic.

Ecuador also saw a wave of protests in 2019 fueled by austerity measures, which left 11 dead. Then-President Lenin Moreno had canceled plans to cut fuel subsidies.
tg/sms (AFP, Reuters)


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ECON - Ecuador economic troubles

Recently I posted about Sri Lanka. Today, I'm posting about Ecuador. I will leave it to the reader to draw conclusions. Twitter Feed "Ecuador has faced almost a fortnight of riots as the people rise over the price of fuel and cost of living, economies are collapsing everywhere, and it's the...

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[Plain Jane]

Ecuador announces fuel price cuts amid protests – DW – 06/27/2022

After weeks of disruptive demonstrations, Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso has announced a price cut for gasoline and diesel. However, the reduction is far less than what protesters have demanded.

www.dw.com

Ecuador announces fuel price cuts in attempt to quell protests
After weeks of disruptive demonstrations, Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso announced a price cut for gasoline and diesel. However, the reduction is far less than what protesters have demanded.




Protests over high prices have caused disruptions in Ecuador for weeks

President Guillermo Lasso announced Sunday that Ecuador will cut fuel prices following weeks of demonstrations over soaring food and fuel prices.

"I have decided to reduce the price of gasoline by 10 cents per gallon and diesel also by 10 cents per gallon," he said in a televised address.

Indigenous leaders have organized protests that have stopped transport and paralyzed parts of Ecuador for weeks. The protest leaders are demanding gasoline be lowered by 30 cents and diesel by 35 cents.

The demonstrations, which began on June 13 and are centered on the capital, Quito, have drawn in an estimated 14,000 protesters.

Clashes between police and demonstrators have left at least six dead and scores injured. Blocked roads have led to fuel and food shortages in the capital.

Oil production hit by protests
The demonstrations have also paralyzed transport and disrupted Ecuador's vital petroleum industry. Indigenous groups have demanded a halt to oil and mining projects and demonstrators have entered flower farms and oil fields, with some facilities reporting damage to equipment.



Watch video02:17
Heightened tensions at nationwide protests in Ecuador
"Oil production is at a critical level. If this situation continues, the country's oil production will be suspended in less than 48 hours as vandalism, the seizure of oil wells and road closures have prevented the transport of equipment and diesel needed to keep operations going," the country's Energy Ministry had said in a statement earlier on Sunday.

The ministry earlier said that oil production has fallen by more than half because of road blockades and vandalism linked to the protest.

The public oil sector, private producers of flowers and dairy products, tourism and other businesses have lost about $500 million due to the protests, the Ministry of Production said.

Lasso faces possible ouster
Amid the unrest, lawmakers are debating whether to remove Lasso from office, but have so far failed to garner enough support for his ouster.

Lawmakers are still debating whether to remove Lasso from office

On Sunday, parliament debated for over seven hours, with proceedings set to resume on Tuesday.

An impeachment would require 92 out of 137 possible votes. Lawmakers will have a maximum of 72 hours to vote following the end of the debate.

Lasso has already met with leaders of the groups organizing protests, and has announced subsidized fertilizers and debt waivers.

The president on Sunday also lifted a state of emergency that had been imposed in six provinces.

"Everyone considers that gas prices have become the cornerstone of maintaining the conflict and though we as a government are very clear that this factor isn't the origin of Ecuadorians problems, we must think of the common good and citizens' peace," Lasso said.
tg/wmr (AFP, AP, Reuters)

 

[Plain Jane]

US officials back in Venezuela in a bid to rebuild ties

Senior Biden administration officials have quietly traveled to Caracas in the latest bid to rebuild relations with the South American oil giant as the war in Ukraine drags on, driving higher gas prices and forcing the U.S. to recalibrate other foreign policy objectives.

apnews.com

https://apnews.com/article/russia-u...la-colombia-ec798d70f4e19e05c88e6ae2b43a19e9#

Click to copy
US officials back in Venezuela in a bid to rebuild ties
By REGINA GARCIA CANO and JOSHUA GOODMANtoday

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro gestures as he speaks in a joint news briefing with his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi at the Saadabad Palace in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Senior U.S. government officials have quietly traveled to Caracas in the latest bid to bring home detained Americans and rebuild relations with the South American oil giant as the war in Ukraine drags on, forcing the U.S. to recalibrate other foreign policy objectives.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson described the trip as a welfare visit focused on the safety of several U.S. citizens detained in Caracas, including a group of oil executives from Houston-based Citgo jailed more than four years ago. The delegation includes Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy on hostage affairs, as well as Ambassador James Story, who heads the U.S. government’s Venezuelan Affairs Unit out of neighboring Colombia.
President Nicolás Maduro confirmed the visit during televised remarks, saying the delegation would meet with a trusted ally, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, to “give continuity to the bilateral agenda between the government of the United States and the government of Venezuela.”


The visit follows a surprise trip in March by the two officials and Juan Gonzalez, the National Security Council director for the Western Hemisphere. That was the first White House trip to the county in more than two decades.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-u...rist-attacks-be890f11b0a5abfb41ddb1cfc8d5b212
That trip resulted in the release of two American citizens who the U.S. considered unjustly detained and a promise from Maduro to jumpstart talks with his opponents. Months earlier, he had suspended the negotiations, led by Norwegian diplomats in Mexico, after a key ally was extradited to the U.S. on money-laundering charges.

It’s unclear what else the officials are seeking to accomplish during the mission. But high on the list are likely to be Maduro’s demand that the U.S. lift crippling oil sanctions that have exacerbated hardships in what was once South America’s most prosperous nation.

Upon arrival in Caracas, Story met for two hours with Juan Guaidó, according to someone close to the leader of the U.S.-backed opposition. The two discussed efforts to jumpstart negotiations in Mexico, according to the person on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

Since the March trip, both the Biden administration and Venezuela’s socialist government have shown a willingness to engage after years of hostilities between Washington and Caracas over Maduro’s 2018 re-election, which was marred by irregularities. The U.S. and other nations withdrew recognition of Maduro after that election, and instead, recognized Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader.

Although negotiations between Maduro and the opposition have yet to resume, the U.S. then renewed a license so that oil companies, including Chevron, could continue to perform only basic upkeep of wells they operate jointly with Venezuela’s state-run oil giant PDVSA.

The White House also lifted sanctions imposed in 2017 targeting the nephew of First Lady Cilia Flores, who at the time was accused of facilitating corruption while a top official at PDVSA.

The trip follows a public plea to the Biden administration from the family of Matthew Heath, a former U.S. Marine arrested nearly two years ago on what the U.S. considers trumped-up terror charges. Heath’s family earlier this month called on the administration to take urgent action to save his life following what they said was a suicide attempt, which the AP has been unable to verify.


The U.S. is also interested in tapping into Venezuela’s vast oil wealth as the war in Ukraine has led to a 50% jump in oil prices that is fueling the worst inflation in decades.

Maduro during his televised remarks Monday alluded to remarks from an official close to French President Emmanuel Macron urging the U.S. to ease sanctions on Venezuela and Iran to offset the spike in oil prices. The comments were made on the sidelines of a meeting of the Group of Seven leaders in Germany.

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves but production has plummeted for the past decade as a result of a drop in prices, mismanagement and the U.S. sanctions. Its presence in the world oil market is today marginal and any attempt to boost production would take time to materialize.
___
Goodman reported from Cleveland, Ohio.

 

[Plain Jane]

Toll now at 53 in San Antonio as families wait for answers

A Mexican immigration official says that in the chaotic minutes after dozens of migrants were found dead inside a tractor-trailer sweltering in the Texas heat, the driver tried to slip away by pretending to be one of the survivors.

apnews.com

San Antonio migrant deaths lead to slow effort to ID victims

San Antonio migrant deaths lead to slow effort to ID victims
By PAUL WEBER, FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ and MARK STEVENSONtoday



1 of 9
A man pays his respects at the site where officials found dozens of people dead in a semitrailer containing suspected migrants, Tuesday, June 28, 2022, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Victims have been found with no identification documents at all and in one case a stolen ID. Remote villages lack phone service to reach family members and determine the whereabouts of missing migrants. Fingerprint data has to be shared and matched by different governments.

More than a day after the discovery of 51 dead migrants in a stifling trailer in San Antonio, few identities of the victims have been made public, illustrating the challenges authorities face in tracing people who cross borders clandestinely.

By Tuesday afternoon, medical examiners had potentially identified 34 of the victims, said Bexar County Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores, who represents the district where the truck was abandoned. Those identities were not yet confirmed pending additional steps, such as fingerprints, and she described it as a challenge with no timeline on when the process might be finished.


“It’s a tedious, tedious, sad, difficult process,” she said.
The bodies were discovered Monday afternoon on the outskirts of San Antonio in what is believed to be the nation’s deadliest smuggling episode on the U.S.-Mexico border. More than a dozen people were taken to hospitals, including four children. Three people have been arrested.

Takeaways from first primaries since Roe v. Wade overturned
The tragedy occurred at a time when huge numbers of migrants have been coming to the U.S., many of them taking perilous risks to cross swift rivers and canals and scorching desert landscapes. Migrants were stopped nearly 240,000 times in May, up by one-third from a year ago.

With little information about the victims, desperate families of migrants from Mexico and Central America frantically sought word of their loved ones.

Among the dead, 27 are believed to be of Mexican origin based on documents they were carrying, according to Rubén Minutti, the Mexico consul general in San Antonio. Several survivors were in critical condition with injuries such as brain damage and internal bleeding, he said. About 30 people had reached out to the Mexican Consulate looking for loved ones, officials said.

Guatemala’s foreign ministry said late Tuesday that it had confirmed two hospitalized Guatemalans and was working to identify three possible Guatemalans among the dead. Honduras’ foreign relations ministry said it was working to confirm the identities of four people who died in the truck and carried Honduran papers.

View attachment 1656495472435.png

Eva Ferrufino, spokeswoman for Honduras’ foreign ministry, said her agency is working with the Honduras consulate in south Texas to match names and fingerprints and complete identifications.

The process is painstaking because among the pitfalls are fake or stolen documents.
Mexico’s foreign affairs secretary identified two people Tuesday who were hospitalized in San Antonio on Tuesday morning. But it turned out that one of the identification cards he shared on Twitter had been stolen last year in the southern state of Chiapas.

Haneydi Antonio Guzman, 23, was safe and sound in a mountain community more than 1,300 miles away from San Antonio on Tuesday when she began receiving messages from family and friends. There is no phone signal there, but she has internet access.

Journalists started showing up at her parents’ home in Escuintla - the address on her ID that was stolen and found in the truck - expecting to find her worried relatives.

“That’s me on the ID, but I am not the person that was in the trailer and they say is hospitalized,” she said.


“My relatives were contacting me worried, asking where I was,” Antonio Guzman said. “I told them I was fine, that I was in my house and I clarified it on by (Facebook page).”

Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard deleted the original tweet identifying her without further comment. The other hospitalized victim Ebrard identified Tuesday turned out to be accurate.

In the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, municipal officials in San Miguel Huautla were traveling to the community of 32-year-old José Luis Guzmán Vásquez late Tuesday to find out if his mother wanted to travel to San Antonio to be with him in the hospital.

Manuel Velasco López, San Miguel Huautla’s municipal secretary, said that another cousin had been traveling with Guzmán Vásquez and was now considered missing.

Yet another cousin, Alejandro López, told Milenio television that their family worked in farming and construction and that they migrated because “we don’t have anything but weaving hats, palms and handicrafts.”


“Growing corn, wheat and beans is what we do in this region and that leads to a lot of our people emigrating and going to the United States,” he said.

Miguel Barbosa, the governor of neighboring Puebla state, set off a scramble for information in the town of Izucar de Matamoros on Tuesday when he said publicly that two of the dead hailed from there.

In the heavily migrant town, everyone was asking themselves if their friends or neighbors were among the dead found in the freight truck in Texas. Rumors abounded, but the city government said no dead had been confirmed from Izucar.

But going to the United States is such a tradition that most youths here at least consider it.
“All of the young people start to think about going (to the U.S.) as soon as they turn 18,” said migrant activist Carmelo Castañeda, who works with the nonprofit Casa del Migrante. “If there aren’t more visas, our people are going to keep dying.”

Migrants typically pay $8,000 to $10,000 to be taken across the border and loaded into a tractor-trailer and driven to San Antonio, where they transfer to smaller vehicles for their final destinations across the United States, said Craig Larrabee, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Antonio.


Conditions vary widely, including how much water passengers get and whether they are allowed to carry cellphones, Larrabee said.

Authorities think the truck discovered Monday had mechanical problems when it was left next to a railroad track in an area of San Antonio surrounded by auto scrapyards that brush up against a busy freeway, said Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff.

San Antonio has been a recurring scene of tragedy and desperation in recent years involving migrants in semitrailers.

Ten migrants died in 2017 after being trapped inside a truck parked at a San Antonio Walmart. In 2003, the bodies of 19 migrants were found in a sweltering truck southeast of the city. More than 50 migrants were found alive in a trailer in 2018, driven by a man who said he was to be paid $3,000 and was sentenced to more than five years in prison.

Other tragedies have occurred long before migrants reached the U.S. In December, more than 50 died when a semitrailer rolled over on a highway in southern Mexico. In October, Mexican authorities reported finding 652 migrants packed into six trailers stopped at a military checkpoint near the border.


During a vigil held Tuesday evening in the rain at a San Antonio park, many of the more than 50 people who attended expressed sadness, frustration and anger at the deaths and what they described as a broken immigration system.
Back in Puebla, farmer Juan Sánchez Carrillo, 45, was sickened when he heard the news of the deaths in Texas.

He himself narrowly escaped death, when he and his friends ran away from dozing migrant rustlers in the mountains near Otay Mesa near San Diego. The criminals -- who Sanchez Carrillo believes were in cahoots with smugglers who brought him over the border -- pointed rifles at the group of 35 migrants and threatened to kill them unless they came up with $1,000 each.

“For the smugglers, we the migrants are not human,” Sánchez Carrillo said. “For them we are no more than merchandise.”
___
Associated Press Writers Juan Lozano in San Antonio, Elliot Spagat in San Diego, Edgar H. Clemente in Villa Comaltitlan, Sonia D. Perez in Guatemala City and Marlon Gonzalez in Tegucigalpa, Honduras contributed to this report.


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BRKG - At least 42 people found dead inside tractor trailer near San Antonio, TX;

BNN Newsroom @BNNUS BREAKING: At least 42 people found dead inside tractor trailer near San Antonio, TX; possible case of human smuggling - KSAT 7:33 PM · Jun 27, 2022·Twitter for Android

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[Plain Jane]

Mexican journalist shot to death, 12th this year – DW – 06/30/2022

It's one of the bloodiest years for press workers in Mexico, with 12 journalists killed so far. In the latest attack, a reporter was shot dead while leaving his home in the state of Tamaulipas.

www.dw.com

Mexico: Journalist shot to death in latest attack on media workers
It's one of the bloodiest years for press workers in Mexico, with 12 journalists killed so far. In the latest attack, a reporter was shot dead while leaving his home in the state of Tamaulipas.




Antonio de la Cruz worked as a journalist for 15 years and regularly criticized corruption on social media

A newspaper reporter was shot to death on Wednesday in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, Mexican authorities said.

He is the 12th journalist to be killed in Mexico so far this year, already approaching its worst annual tally of 13 in recent years in a country that has become notoriously dangerous for reporters.

Mourning for
The journalist was identified as Antonio de la Cruz, who worked as a reporter for the local newspaper Expreso.

De la Cruz was shot while leaving his house in the city of Ciudad Victoria. His 23-year old daughter and wife were also seriously injured in the attack, state prosecutors said.

The 47-year-old regularly reported on rural and social topics such as water shortages. He also frequently criticized alleged acts of corruption by politicians on social media.

The head of Expreso, Miguel Dominguez, said the late reporter "never expressed any concern to us" about his safety.

De la Cruz was "very aware of the reality of Tamaulipas, very brave,'' Dominguez said in an interview with Milenio Television.

Newspaper targeted in the past
Expreso covers news in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas, including security issues. The state is one of the areas most affected by violence involving organized crime and drug cartels.

De La Cruz's employer and media rights groups called for a thorough investigation into the reporter's murder

The paper has been regularly targeted over the years, including a car bomb attack outside its offices in 2012.

In 2018, a human head was left outside Expreso's building, with a warning not to report on the violence taking place in the city.

Another Expreso reporter, Hector Gonzalez, was beaten to death in 2018.

Calls for investigation
De la Cruz's death prompted swift condemnation and calls for a thorough investigation.
"We must not allow more attacks on journalists and activists. These crimes will not go unpunished," President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's spokesman, Jesus Ramirez, wrote on Twitter.

Expreso called for "justice from authorities at all levels."

Rights group Reporters Without Borders urged authorities to launch a probe and investigate whether the murder was linked to de la Cruz's journalistic work.

The state prosecutor's office in Tamaulipas said it was investigating the killing and that a special unit for investigating crimes against freedom of expression had been informed.
Over 150 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 2000. The country is one of the world's most dangerous for media workers, with few cases resulting in convictions.
rs/msh (AP, AFP)

 

[Jedi Master Scot]

Thank you for your posts