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Fernández risks her Midas touch
On 26 January, while 10,000 demonstrators protested against an open-pit mining project in the province of La Rioja, the Argentine government appointed Alicia Castro as the new Argentine ambassador to the UK.
LatinNews Daily Report - 27 January 2012
Peña Nieto drops Gordillo
The Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) announced this week that it was ending its alliance with Elba Esther Gordillo’s Partido Nueva Alianza (Panal) for Mexico’s forthcoming presidential and congressional elections on 1 July. The decision is a huge gamble by the PRI and its de facto presidential candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto. The political calculation is that the threat to PRI unity from the unrest the alliance with the Panal had caused was greater than the damage Gordillo and her political clout could do the PRI and Peña Nieto in the elections. Initially, at least, the gamble has paid off: none of the PRI’s (or more importantly, Peña Nieto’s) rivals have publicly courted Gordillo, and the resignations from the PRI (and thus the threat to party unity) appear to have stopped.
Weekly Report - 26 January 2012 (WR-12-04)
Latin America’s moment
Latin Americans reported back from the World Economic Forum in Davos (23 to 26 January), that, as a group, they were far more optimistic about the world economy than any other region. Two other factors suggest that Latin America is finally going to deliver its economic potential.
Economy & Business - January 2012 (ISSN 1741-7430)
Colombia awakens to real size of ‘Bacrim’ threat
The government of President Juan Manuel Santos is sounding even less triumphal than when the army killed ‘Alfonso Cano’ (Guillermo León Sáenz Vargas) the top leader of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) and when several prominent leaders of the new-generation ‘criminal bands’ were captured in recent months. Realisation is spreading, not only that the Farc are still a force to be reckoned with, but that the ‘criminal bands’ pose a far greater threat than was acknowledged when Santos took office in August 2010. Though close to 3,000 members of these bands have been captured in the past year, they have shown a great ability to recruit new members.
Security & Strategic Review December 2011 (ISSN 1741-4202)
Correa gears up for re-election
Ecuador’s President, Rafael Correa, reached a significant milestone on 16 January: five years in power. He is well aware of his remarkable political longevity by Ecuador’s historical standards. Just before a giant rally celebrating his fifth anniversary in Cuenca, his birthplace and the country’s third largest city, he pointed out that the only Ecuadorean head of state in the last century to serve for five years was Isidro Ayora (1926-1931), “but two of his five and a half years in power were as an interim president and not constitutional”. Correa’s latest tinkering with the electoral system, and judicial reform, suggests that he has every intention of seeking re-election in January 2013, thus breaking the all-time record for a serving president.
Andean Group - January 2012 (ISSN 1741-4466)
