LatinNews Daily - 19 February 2018

Development: Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos claimed on 18 February that a member of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) who died placing an explosive on a road during the guerrilla group’s recent four-day ‘armed strike’ belonged to Venezuela’s Bolivarian national guard (GNB).... Read More

Ecuador: An Ecuadorean military patrol has repelled an attack on the northern border, near the El Pan community, in San Lorenzo, a canton in Ecuador’s coastal border province of Esmeraldas.... Read More

Development: On 18 December, 18 people were taken hostage during a prison riot at the Milton Dias penitentiary in Baixada Fluminense region, Rio de Janeiro state.... Read More

* Brazil’s services sector grew for the second consecutive month by 1.3% in December 2017 from November according to Brazil’s statistics agency IBGE.... Read More

Development: On 16 February Luis Almagro, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), named Ana María Calderón, a Peruvian prosecutor, as the interim head of the OAS-sponsored Mission for Support against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (Maccih).... Read More

Central America... Read More

Development: On 18 February, Mexico’s green party, Partido Verde Ecologista de México (PVEM), broke off their alliance with the federally ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in the southernmost state of Chiapas.... Read More

Mexico: A Mexican air force helicopter carrying the interior minister, Alfonso Navarrete, and the governor of the south-eastern state of Oaxaca, Alejandro Murat Hinojosa, as well as other officials, crashed on 16 February, claiming 14 lives on the ground.... Read More

Development: On 18 February, Chile’s foreign minister Heraldo Muñoz confirmed that the government had hired a lawyer to expedite the process of seeking the extradition of Ricardo Palma Salamanca, a former member of the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR) guerrilla group, who was arrested in France two days earlier.... Read More

Chile: A total of 30 vehicles were destroyed in arson attacks on 16 February in three communes in the southern Biobío and Araucanía regions - Los Álamos, Los Sauces, and Santa Bárbara - where the indigenous Mapuche lay claim to ancestral lands.... Read More

Argentina: On 9 February, Argentina's security minister, Patricia Bullrich, and the Acting Administrator of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Robert Patterson, announced the creation of a taskforce to fight terrorism and drug trafficking at Argentina’s borders with neighbouring Paraguay and Brazil.... Read More