Weekly Report - 15 October 2020 (WR-20-41)

Ecuador is gearing up for general elections in February 2021 that will shape its future economic direction.... Read More

Almost a year to the day after the contentious general election that sparked 12 months of tensions and turbulence [WR-19-42], Bolivia will go to the polls once again on 18 October, in the hope that this vote will produce a more decisive outcome, and bring an end to the country’s political deadlock.... Read More

In a statement celebrating his release from house arrest on 10 October, Colombia’s former president Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) took the opportunity to comment on the ongoing controversy surrounding the investigation led by the country’s transitional justice system (JEP) into historical political assassinations [WR-20-40], lamenting that in Colombia “the truth has become premeditated, in order to deny or edit the facts in accordance with political interests”.... Read More

Peru’s President Martín Vizcarra accused members of congress this week of conspiring to depose him in order to seize control of government and postpone general elections, scheduled for next April, by “a couple of years” on the pretext of containing the spread of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.... Read More

PERU | Economic recovery.... Read More

The widespread human rights violations which Chile’s Carabineros are accused of having committed since social unrest erupted in October 2019 have driven calls for members of the force to be held accountable for their actions, and for a wide-ranging reform of the militarised police.... Read More

Argentina’s Partido Justicialista (PJ, Peronist) government led by President Alberto Fernández faced an eighth nationwide demonstration this week.... Read More

André ‘André do Rap’ de Oliveira Macedo, a presumed leader of Brazil’s Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) drug trafficking organisation (DTO), was released from preventative detention after supreme court (STF) Justice Marco Aurélio Mello granted him habeas corpus on 9 October.... Read More

For months, Paraguayan civil society groups and the political opposition have been calling for President Mario Abdo Benítez to make changes to his cabinet and replace questioned or ineffective ministers.... Read More

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took aim at Mexico’s Catholic Church this week, citing a passage from the latest encyclical published by Pope Francis earlier this month to rebuke the country’s ecclesiastical hierarchy for failing to condemn neoliberalism.... Read More

President Carlos Alvarado and the president of the legislative assembly, Eduardo Cruickshank, of the opposition Partido Restauración Nacional (PRN), have announced the 17 October launch of a multisectoral dialogue to discuss Costa Rica’s financial and economic future.... Read More

President Nayib Bukele launched an intemperate Twitter attack on the magistrates sitting on El Salvador’s constitutional chamber of the supreme court (CSJ) on 12 October.... Read More

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC | Abinader abandons new taxes.... Read More

General elections continue to come thick and fast in the Caribbean in the midst of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, far more than any other region.... Read More

“I want to hand over the country on its feet, in order, although without doubt with problems that will still need to be resolved since not everything can be done in just eight months.”... Read More