Weekly Report - 29 November 2018 (WR-18-47)

A combination of factors lay behind Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s emphatic victory in Mexico’s presidential elections in July, not the least among which were his promise to demilitarise Mexico and the perception that he would stand up to the nationalist rhetoric of US President Donald Trump, but even before assuming power he has taken steps in the opposite direction.... Read More

The vision of a consolidated ‘complete peace’ in Colombia envisioned by former president Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) always looked chimeric if his government could not conclude a peace accord with the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) guerrilla group before he left office in August.... Read More

The Peruvian government plans to invest PEN18.5bn (US$5.5bn) over the next three years to develop the Apurímac, Ene, and Mantaro rivers valley (Vraem), the last redoubt of the Sendero Luminoso (SL) guerrilla group from where around 80% of the country’s annual cocaine production comes.... Read More

PERU | Budget proposal.... Read More

Gazeta do Povo, a Brazilian weekly, published an op-ed on 26 November by the future foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo.... Read More

The appointment of Brazil’s future education minister on 22 November came amid rumours that the evangelical caucus in congress was exercising its influence to dictate President-elect Jair Bolsonaro’s choice.... Read More

It was supposed to be the final to end all finals.... Read More

Still wrestling with the fallout from the killing of a Mapuche youth by the Carabineros militarised police, Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera is now being forced to confront a serious corruption scandal within the army.... Read More

ARGENTINA | Aerolíneas Argentinas.... Read More

Pedro Sánchez last week became the Spanish first prime minister to visit Cuba since 1986.... Read More

It has been a tumultuous week for Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.... Read More

Nicaragua’s opposition parties have all announced their intention of running in the March 2019 regional elections scheduled for the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (Raan) and South Atlantic Autonomous Region (Raas) on the remote, largely indigenous, Caribbean coast.... Read More

After nearly four months of delay, El Salvador’s 84-member legislature has elected four new magistrates for the five-member constitutional chamber (SC) of the supreme court (CSJ), along with one new magistrate to the civil chamber, for nine-year terms.... Read More

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“If we are not able to raise our voice now there is an enormous risk that the voice of the regions, states, and municipalities in this country will be erased forever.”... Read More