Weekly Report - 02 April 2020 (WR-20-13)

The US government led by President Donald Trump is ramping up efforts to topple Nicolás Maduro just as Venezuela is poised to plunge unprepared into a public health crisis of unparalleled proportions.... Read More

Demands for a ceasefire in Colombia for the duration of the coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis have been gathering support for some time – in the last week, the United Nations special representative in Colombia, Carlos Ruiz Massieu, the national truth commission, and the congressional peace commission all added their voices to the appeals of social movements across the country.... Read More

The popularity of President Martín Vizcarra has long been an anomaly in a political system that has broadly lost the trust of the Peruvian public.... Read More

Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno is striving to contend with one of the most serious outbreaks of coronavirus (Covid-19) in the region, while sustaining an indebted economy battered by virus-induced paralysis and the lowest oil prices in a generation.... Read More

On 31 March, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres urged wealthy countries to support those that are less developed in their efforts to tackle the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.... Read More

Faced with the coronavirus pandemic, governments the world over have opted for the enforcement of strict isolation measures to limit the spread of Covid-19.... Read More

The Argentine government led by President Alberto Fernández has missed its self-imposed deadline to conclude debt renegotiations with the country’s foreign creditors.... Read More

Spare a thought for President Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou.... Read More

The global copper industry has been struck by the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.... Read More

BRAZIL | Unemployment on the rise.... Read More

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador appealed on 31 March for “a month’s truce” with his political adversaries, who he accused of being intent on sowing divisions and deepening polarisation in Mexico.... Read More

MEXICO | USMCA battle.... Read More

This week the national police announced that over 700 people had been arrested for failing to heed the “absolute curfew” announced by President Juan Orlando Hernández on 20 March (since extended until 12 April) to stop the spread of coronavirus (Covid-19).... Read More

Last week Costa Rica’s tourism institute (ICT) declared the tourism sector to be in a state of “total emergency and calamity” due to the impact of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic which has forced President Carlos Alvarado to close the country’s borders, among other stringent measures.... Read More

Bolivia went into full lockdown on 29 March, the day after the country suffered its first fatality from the outbreak of coronavirus (Covid-19).... Read More

“I request your invaluable support in the face of this unusual and arbitrary persecution, executed through a new version of that rancid McCarthyism unleashed after World War II.... Read More