Weekly Report - 22 April 2021 (WR-21-16)

Peru plunged headlong this week into one of the most polarised electoral campaigns in the country’s history.... Read More

The tax reform bill that Colombia’s government presented on 15 April has drawn stark divisions in congress and prompted anger from trade unions, who have called a national strike in response to what they see as an excessive fiscal burden on lower income groups.... Read More

Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno invited Guillermo Lasso, the victor in the second-round run-off on 11 April, to a meeting this week in Carondelet, the presidential palace.... Read More

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) will begin operations in Venezuela, following a visit by the organisation’s executive director, David Beasley, who met both the de facto president Nicolás Maduro and the leader of the opposition, Juan Guaidó.... Read More

Every April for the past 17 years, representatives from Brazil’s more than 300 indigenous ethnic groups have marched to the capital, Brasília, for the Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL) mobilisation, an opportunity to defend their rights and articulate their demands at a political level.... Read More

On 19 April Brazil’s federal congress approved a government-sponsored bill modifying the budgetary guidelines law (LDO) for this year’s national budget, in a bid to resolve the deadlock over its approval as President Jair Bolsonaro had yet to sanction it.... Read More

With an initiative allowing Chileans to make a third withdrawal of up to 10% from their pension pots close to being approved in congress, on 20 April the government led by President Sebastián Piñera filed a challenge to the measure with the constitutional court (TC).... Read More

A decree issued by Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández introducing a series of new temporary restrictions to slow the transmission of the coronavirus (Covid-19) has exacerbated political tensions, sparking a dispute that has made it all the way to the supreme court (CSJN).... Read More

Not for the first time Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is facing criticism from the political opposition for seeking to exert control over key state institutions.... Read More

MEXICO | Drought.... Read More

Cuba’s Revolution headed into uncharted territory on 19 April.... Read More

Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse last week named Foreign Minister Claude Joseph as his sixth prime minister since taking office in February 2017 after Joseph Jouthe resigned, just over a year into the post.... Read More

Electoral reform has long been a demand of Nicaragua’s political opposition, and the international community, ahead of the 7 November general elections in which President Daniel Ortega is seeking a further term.... Read More

Ecuador’s president-elect Guillermo Lasso wasted little time in heading abroad after his electoral victory on 11 April.... Read More

“No more poor people in a rich country!”... Read More