Weekly Report - 02 August 2018 (WR-18-30)

Just one month after winning Mexico’s presidential elections and four months before he takes office, President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador is being accused by some within the political opposition of a naked power grab under the pretext of combating corruption.... Read More

Faced by continuing revelations of wrongdoing in the judiciary and elsewhere Peru’s President Martín Vizcarra took the bull by the horns, using the traditional state-of-the-nation address on independence day, 28 July, to announce a wide-ranging referendum on key anti-corruption reforms.... Read More

It was the political announcement that shocked Colombia: the most influential figure in national politics, Alvaro Uribe, former president (2002-2010) and main leader of the right-wing Centro Democrático (CD), had decided to abandon his senate seat in order to fight off a court case being brought against him by the supreme court.... Read More

Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro is under investigation as part of a US probe into a US$1.2bn scheme to divert money from the state oil company Pdvsa into European and US bank accounts and South Florida real estate, media reports have claimed.... Read More

BOLIVIA | GDP up in first quarter, but drought causes concern.... Read More

Facebook, the US-based social media giant, announced on 25 July that it was de-activating 196 pages and 87 accounts in Brazil that were part of a coordinated network that was misleading users and “sowing division and spreading misinformation”.... Read More

Chile’s Interior & Public Security Minister Andrés Chadwick was last week forced to recognise an increase in “violent actions” in the impoverished southern La Araucanía region, long the site of unrest stemming from indigenous Mapuche claims to ancestral land.... Read More

The stage is set for an intense confrontation between rival cross-party coalitions next week, which will pit “greens” against “blues”.... Read More

A series of leaked audio recordings of conversations between an official in Paraguay’s supreme electoral tribunal (TSJE) and political leaders have raised serious questions about the validity of the results of the 22 April general election.... Read More

URUGUAY-CHILE | Extended FTA with Chile finally approved.... Read More

Paulo Abrão, the executive director of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), recently warned that the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) government led by President Daniel Ortega had now begun the “third phase of repression” in response to the crisis sparked by anti-government protests in mid-April – criminalising opposition leaders.... Read More

Despite various obstacles thrown in his way by the national electoral authorities (TSE), Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s most popular politician, will run for the presidency in 2019.... Read More

The scale of the public security challenge facing Mexico’s President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador was laid bare this week by the release of figures showing that homicides reached a record high in 2017.... Read More

“I don’t know of any governors who need an intermediary to speak with the president of the Republic.”... Read More