Weekly Report - 18 November 2021 (WR-21-46)

Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández found himself in a strange position this week: facing one of his party’s worst electoral defeats in decades, he called a rally in Plaza de Mayo in central Buenos Aires to celebrate what he described as an electoral “triumph”.... Read More

Peru’s defence minister, Walter Ayala, stood down on 14 November after being accused of interfering in military promotions.... Read More

Yet another prison massacre rocked the Penitenciaría del Litoral, the main prison in Guayaquil (Guayas province) on 12 November, leaving 68 inmates dead and triggering a public spat between President Guillermo Lasso and the constitutional court (CC).... Read More

On 17 November two local leaders of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) guerrilla group were captured in a joint army and police operation in Teorama, Norte de Santander department.... Read More

Chileans go to the polls on 21 November to elect their next president and congressional representatives.... Read More

Brazil has been racking up encouraging news on the coronavirus (Covid-19).... Read More

Although President Jair Bolsonaro did not attend the COP26 climate talks earlier this month in Scotland (“everyone would have thrown stones at him”, Vice President Hamilton Mourão said to explain the head of state’s absence), a large delegation was present at the conference in Glasgow to push the image of Brazil as a green power.... Read More

In a joint operation between Mexico’s army, federal prosecutors, and intelligence agency (CNI), Rosalinda González Valencia, the wife of Nemesio ‘El Mencho’ Oseguera Cervantes, the leader of the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) drug trafficking organisation (DTO), was captured in Zapopan, Jalisco state, on 15 November.... Read More

Mexico’s supreme court (SCJN) has ruled that a government-backed proposal to extend the term of its chief justice Arturo Zaldívar by two years is unconstitutional.... Read More

MEXICO | Raising benchmark interest rate.... Read More

The highly anticipated ‘Civic March for Change’, a day of nationwide protest planned for 15 November, failed to materialise after the Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC) government deployed what Juan Pappier, a researcher for the US-based NGO Human Rights Watch, described as a “strategy of total suppression”.... Read More

Over 50 civil-society groups together with international human rights organisations have sounded the alarm about a new ‘foreign agents law’ proposed by the Nuevas Ideas (NI) government led by President Nayib Bukele.... Read More

The US, UK, and Canada have all announced new sanctions on Nicaraguan officials and institutions following the 7 November general election which was widely panned as undemocratic [WR-21-45].... Read More

In the run-up to the 21 November regional elections, in which 21m eligible Venezuelan voters are set to elect roughly 3,000 officials including councillors, mayors, and 23 state governors, President Nicolás Maduro’s government has allowed the opposition a greater degree of political freedom than usual.... Read More

“Never forget that the triumph isn’t to win, it’s to never accept defeat.”... Read More