Weekly Report - 02 May 2024 (WR-24-17)

Haiti’s new transitional presidential council is up and running, appointing a new prime minister to replace Ariel Henry.... Read More

Questions regarding the financing of President Gustavo Petro’s 2022 election campaign are now being aimed at his wider left-wing Pacto Histórico coalition.... Read More

Tensions between Peru’s judicial oversight body (JNJ) and the suspended attorney general, Patricia Benavides, are once again coming to a head, with potentially significant implications for judicial independence.... Read More

The president of Venezuela’s national assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, this week called for the maximum 30-year prison sentence to be handed down to “the traitor” Tareck El Aissami, the recently arrested former oil minister, who stands accused of involvement in a corruption network in the state-run oil firm Pdvsa.... Read More

BOLIVIA | Gas fuels latest bout of infighting.... Read More

Argentina’s President Javier Milei registered his first political victory of note this week after a string of defeats since coming to power last December.... Read More

Three Carabineros were shot dead on 27 April in southern Chile.... Read More

The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been trying to meet its fiscal objectives by raising more revenue, a goal complicated by congress, which has backed legislation to extend tax benefits.... Read More

Agrishow, one of the largest trade fairs for the agribusiness sector in Brazil, began on 28 April.... Read More

BRAZIL | Job creation rises.... Read More

The second presidential debate took place in Mexico on 28 April.... Read More

In a press conference on 30 April, Mexico’s federal public security minister, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, confirmed that a judge had released Abraham ‘Don Rodo’ Oseguera Cervantes, the brother of Nemesio ‘El Mencho’ Oseguera Cervantes, the alleged leader of the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG).... Read More

MEXICO | First USMCA labour dispute panel resolved.... Read More

El Salvador’s legislative assembly, controlled by Nayib Bukele’s personalist party Nuevas Ideas (NI), will have carte blanche to amend the constitution in the new legislature which began sitting on 1 May.... Read More

Nicaragua’s authoritarian government led by President Daniel Ortega has announced various new initiatives with Chinese public and private firms in the areas of energy and mining.... Read More

The disappearance of Salvador Rangel, the retired Catholic bishop of Chilpancingo-Chilapa diocese in Mexico’s crime-ridden Guerrero state, was the source of shock this week.... Read More

“The population of Port-au-Prince has literally been taken hostage…[and] the institutional structures of the Haitian state, already weakened by decades of political instability, have suffered a spectacular collapse.”... Read More