LatinNews Daily - 25 June 2018

Development: On 23 June, Nicaragua’s Catholic Episcopal Conference (CEN), which is mediating the national dialogue between the government led by President Daniel Ortega and opposition groups led by the protest group Alianza Cívica por la Justicia y Democracia, urged the president to bring forward the next general election from 2021 to 2019.... Read More

Development: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank conducted visits to Ecuador last week.... Read More

Venezuela: Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez has called on the Guyanese government to return to the negotiation table and abandon the lawsuit it has taken before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague over the historical bilateral dispute over the Essequibo region.... Read More

Development: On 23 June, O Estado de São Paulo published a survey showing that 77.8% of Brazilians did not trust the country’s political parties, a figure that has almost doubled in the last four years.... Read More

* Austrian cellulose producer Lenzing and its Brazilian partner, Duratex, have announced plans to build a new US$1bn soluble cellulose plant in Brazil’s eastern state of Minas Gerais.... Read More

Costa Rica: Local trade unions are participating in a 24-hour national strike to protest against the tax reform and austerity measures proposed by President Carlos Alvarado, which aim to reduce Costa Rica’s fiscal deficit.... Read More

Development: On 24 June Izquierda Democrática (IDN), a faction of Mexico’s left-wing Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), announced that it would switch its support in the upcoming 1 July presidential election from Ricardo Anaya, the candidate for the Right-Left Por México al Frente coalition, to Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the candidate of the leftist Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena) party.... Read More

* The president of Mexico’s national iron and steel industry chamber (Canacero), Máximo Vedoya, has said that the domestic steel industry is preparing a plan to minimise the impact of the recently introduced 25% steel import tariffs imposed by the US government.... Read More

Development: On 23 June Uruguay’s ruling Frente Amplio (FA) coalition announced that its constituent members had agreed to vote in favour of ratifying the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that the Uruguayan government signed with Chile in October 2016.... Read More

Chile: Union workers at the Chuquicamata mine, Chile’s largest copper mine, have voted in favour of a strike.... Read More

Guatemala: On 17 June, human rights entities from Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador, and Colombia published a joint petition which was sent to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) requesting the issue of precautionary measures to prevent the separation of immigrant children from their families on the US border with Mexico.... Read More