Weekly Report - 16 July 2020 (WR-20-28)

Suriname’s Desi Bouterse transferred the presidential sash to Chandrikapersad Santokhi on 16 July.... Read More

For all the vitriol and division that has characterised Bolivian politics in recent months, street protests had remained relatively limited, for fear of exacerbating the spread of coronavirus (Covid-19).... Read More

Peru’s President Martín Vizcarra announced the replacement of half his ministerial team on 15 July, against a background of his government’s falling popularity due to a long coronavirus (Covid-19) lockdown and a rapidly deteriorating economy.... Read More

In a 10 July interview with US television channel Telemundo, US President Donald Trump commented that “something will be happening with Venezuela”, and that the US will “be very much involved”.... Read More

Faced by signs of a rapidly rising coronavirus (Covid-19) infection curve, on 10 July Claudia López, the mayor of Bogotá, announced the re-imposition of partial and rolling lockdown measures across the capital city.... Read More

PERU | Economy in dire straits.... Read More

Argentina’s government has made its “final” debt-restructuring offer to bondholders, to a mixed reaction.... Read More

Chileans are angry again.... Read More

A comment by a supreme court (STF) magistrate has reignited some of the tensions between the judiciary and the executive in Brazil.... Read More

“Blind reopening not associated with a careful stepwise process based on data, based on open communication, may not lead to where anybody wishes to go in any country, Mexico included”.... Read More

A stand-off between Guatemala’s constitutional court (CC) on the one hand and the supreme court (CSJ) and 160-member unicameral legislature (one of the country’s least trusted institutions) on the other, over the election of 13 justices for the CSJ and 135 appellate magistrates has reignited fresh concerns about the state of democracy in Guatemala.... Read More

Human rights ombudsman (PDDH) José Apolonio Tobar recently warned that “maintaining levels of confrontation between…the executive and legislature is only causing the number of Salvadoreans infected and dying from coronavirus (Covid-19) to increase”.... Read More

Colombia’s Defence Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said on 13 July that the government was preparing to recommence aerial spraying of illicit coca crops.... Read More

“We are balancing on the edge of an international default.... Read More