Weekly Report - 19 September 2019 (WR-19-37)

Venezuela’s de facto government is ratcheting up the pressure on the widely recognised interim president Juan Guaidó with a legal fusillade.... Read More

The murder of three candidates competing in Colombia’s upcoming regional and municipal elections since the start of September has revived old fears about the nefarious influence of the country’s internal conflict on its democratic processes.... Read More

The approval rating of Peru’s President Martín Vizcarra suffered a second straight monthly decline in September, according to a poll conducted by the pollster Ipsos for the national daily El Comercio.... Read More

With just over a month until the 20 October general elections, violence erupted last week in Santa Cruz, the capital of the eponymous province, amid clashes between supporters of President Evo Morales’ Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) and opposition groups, which left eight injured.... Read More

On 15 September, the Brazilian daily Folha de São Paulo published a photograph of an Amazon landscape, in which a sky turned red by flames is reflected in the Tapajós River, one of the major tributaries of the Amazon River.... Read More

Raquel Dodge, the first woman to lead Brazil’s attorney general’s office (PGR), reached the end of her two-year term on 17 September.... Read More

President Mauricio Macri’s slender hopes of forcing a second round in Argentina’s presidential elections on 27 October appeared to be extinguished last week when inflation surged once again in Argentina.... Read More

The electoral fortunes of Daniel Martínez, the presidential candidate of Uruguay’s ruling left-wing Frente Amplio (FA) coalition, appear to be reviving in line with the rapidly fading prospects of Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri, who will contest elections on the same day.... Read More

Paraguay’s President Mario Abdo Benítez decided to make an additional change to his ministerial cabinet this week following the resignation of his justice minister.... Read More

The deployment of Mexico’s newly created national guard (GN) was billed as a turning point in efforts to reduce violence and improve public security in the country by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.... Read More

Marking his first 100 days in office on 8 September El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele highlighted various achievements – the recent drop in homicides which he attributes to his security plan ‘Plan Control Territorial’ [WR-19-35]; a national health plan; and the establishment of a new international mechanism to fight impunity and corruption (Cicies).... Read More

Guatemala’s President-elect Alejandro Giammattei has paid his first visit to the US since winning the August run-off election.... Read More

Cuba is not facing a second ‘Special Period’, President Miguel Díaz-Canel insisted during two televised appearances on 10 and 11 September to announce the most serious fuel crisis in the country since the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s.... Read More

“The constitution expressly mentions the institutional duty of cooperation and coordination between government powers.”... Read More