Weekly Report - 02 September 2021 (WR-21-35)

The first set-piece confrontation between Peru’s new left-wing administration and its largely right-leaning congress ended on 27 August, with victory for President Pedro Castillo, whose government won a critical vote of confidence.... Read More

Colombia’s 2022 presidential race could ultimately boil down to a confrontation between ‘Uribismo’ on the right and ‘Petrismo’ on the left.... Read More

A report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), published on 31 August, found that coca cultivation in Bolivia reached its highest level in a decade in 2020.... Read More

Venezuela’s main opposition parties, grouped under the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) coalition, announced on 31 August that they will participate in the November regional and municipal elections rather than repeat the boycott of the December 2020 legislative election.... Read More

Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso marked his 100th day in office on 31 August, meeting his campaign pledge to vaccinate 9m Ecuadoreans against the coronavirus (Covid-19) in that timeframe.... Read More

At the end of August, thousands of indigenous people from across Brazil mobilised in the capital, Brasília, in numbers not seen since the constituent assembly of 1987-1988 during which the current constitution – which recognises indigenous peoples’ right to their culture and way of life and establishes a framework to guarantee these rights – was drafted.... Read More

The Chilean government quietly published an update to Nautical Chart No 8, covering the far south of the country, on 23 August.... Read More

In a surprise move on 26 August, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that his interior minister, Olga Sánchez Cordero, was stepping down and returning to the senate, to be replaced by the governor of Tabasco, Adán Augusto López.... Read More

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador delivered his annual state-of-the-nation address, or ‘Informe’, to congress on 1 September.... Read More

MEXICO | Banxico lifts growth projection.... Read More

Last year the local online investigative publication El Faro made headlines over claims that the government led by President Nayib Bukele had held negotiations with one of El Salvador’s main street gangs, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), in the country’s maximum security prisons [WR-20-36].... Read More

“Morally incorrect”.... Read More

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO | Bouncing back.... Read More

Provincial elections in Corrientes delivered a remarkable landslide for the national opposition-aligned governor, Gustavo Valdés, who won re-election with over 76% of the vote, more than 50 percentage points ahead of his main rival, Fabián Ríos, who lined up with the ruling centre-left federal coalition, Frente de Todos (FdT), and who gained the support of only 23% of the voters.... Read More

“This afternoon, perhaps the most mediocre cabinet in Peru’s republican history has been recognised, but we accept the vote.”... Read More