LatinNews Regional Monitor: Brazil & Southern Cone - 02 May 2018

Development: On 1 May, thousands of protesters campaigned to free Brazil's jailed former president Lula da Silva (2003-2011) from the leftist Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) on International Labour Day.... Read More

* Brazil's President Michel Temer has said that the minister for national integration, Antonio de Pádua, will help rehouse victims of a fire that destroyed a 24-storey building in the cit of São Paulo on 1 May.  Around 400 squatters were thought to be living in the building, located in the central Largo do Paissandu square.... Read More

Development: On 1 May, Uruguay’s umbrella workers’ union, Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores- Convención Nacional de Trabajadores (Pit-Cnt), called on the government to reduce local electricity tariffs as a way to ease the tax burden on workers and improve their situation. ... Read More

Paraguay: Héctor Cristaldo, the president of the Unión de Gremios de la Producción (UGP), a local agricultural producers’ grouping, has expressed concerns that the current month-long drought in the country is going to negatively impact some of Paraguay’s main export crops such as maize and soya.... Read More

Famously, the 1992 Bill Clinton election campaign headquarters had a sign up on the wall proclaiming “it’s the economy, stupid” – an exhortation to focus on what was seen as the top issue of the time.... Read More

Lula da Silva is the first former president (2003-2011) to do jailtime for a common crime.... Read More

The prison riots which dominated the headlines last year remain a major security issue which will be a key electoral topic.... Read More

A wave of organised crime-related violence has hit Uruguay’s border town of Chuy and its sister Brazilian town of Chuí.... Read More