LatinNews Daily - 20 March 2023

On 19 March, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro suspended a ceasefire between his government and the Clan del Golfo drug trafficking organisation (DTO).... Read More

* At least 15 people have been killed and over 460 injured by an earthquake that struck Ecuador and Peru on 18 March, with the greatest damage reported to be in the Ecuadorean cities of Machala (El Oro province) and Cuenca (Azuay).... Read More

On 19 March, the Brazilian polling firm Ipec, in partnership with the newspaper O Globo, released a report on the approval ratings of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government during its first two months, showing higher public approval than his predecessor’s early months.... Read More

* The secretariat of economic policy (SPE) in Brazil’s finance ministry has lowered its growth forecast for 2023 from 2.1% to 1.61%.... Read More

On 17 March the Honduran American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) issued a statement expressing “concern” over the government's planned tax reforms which it said would increase the cost of living, reduce the country’s economic competitiveness, and discourage foreign investment.... Read More

*US Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), the chairman of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, and his counterpart in the upper house, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), have sent a series of bipartisan letters to the presidents of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras – Rodrigo Chaves, Nayib Bukele, Alejandro Giammattei, and Xiomara Castro respectively – urging them to leverage their position in the Central American development bank (BCIE) to stop its development funding from “propping up the Nicaraguan regime of Daniel Ortega and [First Lady] Rosario Murillo.” The joint letter cites the recent report by United Nations (UN) experts accusing Ortega of crimes against humanity and remarks by Pope Francis which “likened the brutality of the Ortega-Murillo regime to that of Hitler’s dictatorship”, underlining these “shocking characterisations of the situation in Nicaragua underscore the urgency of ending a ‘business as usual’ approach” with the Ortega government.... Read More

On 19 March, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador met with US legislators following recent tensions between the two countries.... Read More

* Italian oil company Eni has announced a new oil discovery on the Yatzil exploration prospect in Block 7, in the waters of Cuenca Salina in the Sureste Basin off the coast of Mexico.... Read More

On 17 March Chile’s former president Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014, 2018-2022) launched a new Ibero-American forum of conservative leaders, the Grupo Libertad y Democracia, in Santiago.... Read More

*Paraguay’s central bank (BCP) has released the latest results of its monthly survey of economic experts.... Read More

Brazil: From 7-9 March, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, visited Brasília, Brazil to promote US-Brazil relations, with a specific focus on bilateral trade and commerce.... Read More