Weekly Report - 09 January 2020 (WR-20-01)

Nicolás Maduro bided his time before making his move.... Read More

The Christmas period achieved what government negotiators could not, and delivered President Iván Duque some much-needed respite from the protests that swept Colombia’s cities from 21 November 2019.... Read More

Bolivia’s electoral authority (TSE) has published the calendar for the country’s 2020 general election, called by Jeanine Áñez’s interim government to supersede last October’s election, which was annulled over allegations of fraud.... Read More

The dissolution of congress on 30 September by Peru’s President Martín Vizcarra was legitimate, according to a report drawn up into the matter by a magistrate sitting on the seven-strong constitutional tribunal (TC) presented to colleagues this week.... Read More

Ecuador’s new tax reform came into force on 1 January - but not without some eleventh-hour drama.... Read More

The New Year has started in Chile in the same vein as the final months of 2019, with regular street protests in rejection of social inequality and the government’s poor handling of the discontent.... Read More

President Alberto Fernández argues that such is the scale of the task he faces that his government needs three months just to grasp the exact state of the national economy.... Read More

With just under two months to go until he takes office on 1 March, Uruguay’s president-elect Luis Lacalle Pou faces a long transition process.... Read More

Jair Bolsonaro completed a year as president of Brazil on 1 January.... Read More

BRAZIL | 2019 trade balance battered by global difficulties.... Read More

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confidently asserted in his New Year’s address that his government would reduce the soaring levels of violence in Mexico, which scaled new heights during his first year in office.... Read More

The Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) leftist indigenous insurgent group used its customary New Year’s declaration to reiterate its opposition to the ‘Tren Maya’ railway project being advanced by the government led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and to question his professed commitment to respect and uphold the rights of Mexico’s indigenous communities.... Read More

MEXICO | Tapping international financial markets.... Read More

At the start of the year, Panama’s President Laurentino Cortizo gave his six-month balance sheet in which he identified two key priorities for 2020 – the economy and security.... Read More

President Miguel Díaz-Canel marked the 61st anniversary of the Cuban Revolution on 1 January by claiming that the Communist state would endure in the face of external aggression because Cubans were “conquerors of the impossible”.... Read More

“I profoundly regret the dictatorship’s pitiful ‘show’ to try to prevent the inevitable…I am not asking for a second opportunity for Juan Guaidó.... Read More