Weekly Report - 12 December 2019 (WR-19-49)

After a four-year hiatus, Peronism is back in Argentina...

A month on from Evo Morales’ resignation as President, the divisions exposed by the political crisis remain clearer than ever despite the approval of an electoral law paving the way for fresh elections [WR-19-47]...

Ecuador’s national assembly approved two significant bills this week: one will have an impact on the economic future facing the government led by President Lenín Moreno by helping to alleviate the fiscal deficit without triggering the massive protests that greeted the ill-fated attempt to end fuel subsidies in October; the other will have an impact on the political future of the next government that emerges from elections in February 2021...

When President Iván Duque announced on 2 December that his government would enter direct negotiations with representatives of the Comité Nacional del Paro grouping of striking civil society organisations, it seemed that an end was in sight for the public protests that have been taking place across Colombia since 21 November, costing five lives and trillions of pesos...

Two indigenous leaders were murdered on 7 December in the north-eastern state of Maranhão, which is part of the Brazilian ‘Legal Amazon’...

The ‘family photo’ taken on 5 December at the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) trade bloc’s heads of state summit in Bento Gonçalves, a municipality in the heart of Brazil’s wine country in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, is already out of date...

The Chilean government has taken more steps this week to try to put an end to the social protests that have been raging in the country for over a month now...

After months of protracted negotiations and uncertainty, a new trilateral trade agreement to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) won final approval this week...

MEXICO | Oil boost...

Following the closure of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (Cicig), backed by the United Nations (UN), earlier this year, there are fears that the Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (Maccih), sponsored by the Organization of American States (OAS), might face a similar fate: the Partido Nacional (PN) government led by President Juan Orlando Hernández, which has faced some uncomfortable questions following the conviction in October 2019 of Hernández’s brother Juan Antonio ‘Tony’ Hernández for drug-related crimes [WR-19-45], has yet to confirm whether it intends to renew Maccih’s mandate when it expires next month...

NICARAGUA | Budget...

Uruguay’s President Tabaré Vázquez invited president-elect Luis Lacalle Pou to travel with him on the presidential plane to attend the investiture of Argentina’s Alberto Fernández on 10 December...

“Everyone needs to work together and put an end to the divisions that have caused so much harm.”..