Weekly Report - 01 August 2019 (WR-19-30)

Peru’s President Martín Vizcarra waited until near the end of his televised annual address to congress on 28 July to spring a surprise on his audience.... Read More

Colombian Finance Minister Alberto Carrasquilla presented a draft budget bill for 2020 to congress on 29 July.... Read More

COLOMBIA | Agreement with Chinese search engine to boost tourism.... Read More

Paraguay’s President Mario Abdo Benítez is facing a major political crisis with his political opponents pushing for his impeachment over the signing of a controversial bilateral agreement with the Brazilian government on the distribution of electricity produced at the Itaipú binational hydroelectric dam.... Read More

“Brazil is transitioning away from an unsustainable fiscal path and towards a more open and competitive economic framework, which will remove obstacles to productivity growth,” the executive director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for Brazil, Alexandre Tombini, said in a statement published along with the July 2019 country report.... Read More

A meeting in Brasília on 29 July between Brazil’s Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo and his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, was an opportunity for both to highlight the economic benefits that the European Union (EU)-Southern Common Market (Mercosur) trade deal will bring their countries.... Read More

With just two weeks left before the open, mandatory, and simultaneous primaries (Paso) ahead of the October general election, electoral campaigning has intensified in Argentina.... Read More

CHILE | Diesel spill in Patagonia.... Read More

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is coming under mounting pressure eight months into his ‘sexenio’ to get a handle on violent crime.... Read More

MEXICO | Trade surplus.... Read More

“A critical moment for rule of law in Guatemala.” This was the response by the respected US think tank Washington Office on Latin America (Wola) to the recent announcement that the US and Guatemalan governments had reached a deal whereby Guatemala would serve as a “safe third country”.... Read More

President Jovenel Moïse last week appointed technocrat Fritz William Michel as his fourth prime minister since taking office in February 2017 after Jean Michel Lapin stepped aside after failing to get his government plan and cabinet approved by the bicameral legislature.... Read More

A statement was published on the global anarchist network website ‘contrainfo’ on 27 July signed by a self-proclaimed anarchist group calling itself ‘Cómplices Sediciosos/Fracción por la Venganza’ in which it assumed responsibility for the two parcel bombs that were sent out through the post to two separate addresses in Chile’s capital two days earlier.... Read More

“There is nowhere in Peru where I have not heard the cry ‘president, close congress’.”... Read More