Weekly Report - 01 October 2020 (WR-20-39)

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is intent on stoking past resentments in a bid to divert attention from the grim present reality and spark future electoral success.... Read More

For most of this year an unrelenting combination of heavy-handed political and popular repression, a catastrophic economy, and fear of the coronavirus (Covid-19) infection has damped down street protests in Venezuela.... Read More

Reports of a Chinese-flagged mega fishing fleet operating close to Peru’s territorial waters have caused concern in Lima, but the government is also wary that it is being egged on by the US, eager to drag it into a maritime dispute with a superpower rival.... Read More

One thing that Bolivia’s protracted election campaign has unequivocally demonstrated is that a shared opposition to the previous Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) government is not as powerful a force for unity as some in the country had hoped.... Read More

Facing growing pressure, Colombia’s defence minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo unleashed a late-night Twitter tirade on 27 September, in which he defended the “legitimate authority” of state security forces “to confront vandals, violent terrorists, instigators, and accomplices”, and repeatedly called for the “slanderers” who criticised him to be “thrown in prison”.... Read More

The campaigning for Chile’s national plebiscite on 25 October on whether the country needs a new constitution is now in full swing, with those that want a new constitution and those opposed to it allowed to conduct public and media campaigns to try to sway voters.... Read More

Argentina’s supreme court (CSJN) ruled on 29 September that it would consider ‘per saltum’ appeals against the transfer of three federal judges involved in corruption investigations.... Read More

Brazilians will elect their mayor and municipal councillors for the next four years in the country’s 5,568 municipalities on 15 November, with a second round planned for 29 November.... Read More

President Jair Bolsonaro’s government does not seem to have a clear economic agenda.... Read More

It is necessary to go back more than 30 years to see so many departmental intendants (governors) representing Uruguay’s centre-right Partido Nacional (PN, Blancos) come to power.... Read More

The Paraguayan government is the only member of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) to have come out in defence of the trade agreement that the bloc signed with the European Union (EU) in June 2019 following the threat by the French government not to ratify it unless Mercosur members show greater commitment to protecting the environment [WR-20-38].... Read More

“A slow but sure departure from the rule of law and norms of democracy”.... Read More

Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse has named a new nine-member provisional electoral council (CEP).... Read More

Venezuela has launched a rescheduling offer for holders of sovereign Venezuelan bonds, as well as those issued by the state oil company Pdvsa and the power company Electricidad de Caracas (EDC).... Read More

“The referendum [on whether to prosecute former presidents] would not contravene any guarantees, quite the reverse, it is presenting the people with the freedom to exercise their sovereignty”.... Read More