President José Mujica conducted the longest foreign tour of his whole term at the end of May, the main focus of which was China. While Mujica was away his vice-president, Danilo Astori, made a compelling case for Uruguay breaking free of at least some of the fetters of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) and fully enlisting in the Pacific Alliance, the nascent trade and integration bloc comprising Chile, Colombia, Peru and Mexico, which is focused on reaching out to the Asia-Pacific region and complements Uruguay’s openness to free trade much more than Mercosur. Mujica deepens ties with China Mujica arrived…

The 31 May murder of wealthy cattle rancher, Luis Alberto Lindstron Picco, shocked all of Paraguay. Lindstron gained national notoriety for being the first kidnap victim of the insurgent Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo (EPP) back in July 2008. Following his release after 43 days, upon payment of a substantial ransom by his family, Lindstron refused to collaborate with the authorities’ efforts to capture his abductors, maintaining that he would prefer not antagonise the EPP and instead try to return to his previous low-profile lifestyle. In spite of this, Lindstron was brutally murdered in an armed attack that had all the…

In late May, the president of Chile’s Partido Comunista (PC), Guillermo Teillier, formally declared his party’s backing for former president, Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010), the favourite for the November presidential contest. This is the first time the PC has backed a candidate from the main centre-left Concertación alliance (comprising four parties) in the first round. President Sebastián Piñera and his ruling Coalición por el Cambio (CC) were quick to indulge in some scare-mongering, warning that the PC’s support would pull the Concertación to the radical left. There has also been some unease from within the Concertación itself – in particular from…

Peter Beaven, the president of mining company BHP Billiton Cobre, has raised concerns about high production costs and the fall in productivity in Chile, the world’s biggest copper producer. Accounting for 13% of GDP and 60% of total exports in 2012, mining remains by far the biggest destination of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Chile, attracting US$15bn in 2012 (49% of the total). Beaven made his remarks on 11 June, when presenting the 2012 sustainability report for BHP Billiton Cobre, which operates the Cerro Colorado copper mine in the Tarapacá region and the Spence and Escondida copper mines, both in…

Since the end of May’s celebrations marking ‘The Won Decade’ of Kirchnerist power, the government has been in full campaign mode ahead of October’s legislative elections. In the unlikely event that President Cristina Fernández’s dominant Frente Para La Victoria (FPV) faction of the ruling Partido Justicialista (PJ, Peronists) wins a two-thirds majority in congress, she would have the votes required to overturn the constitutional ban prohibiting a bid for a third term of office. Though she has repeatedly claimed she has no intention of running again, many of her allies are hoping for a change of heart. Uncertainty over her…

“A state-of-the-art Ferrari, minus the wheels”, is how Luis Miguel Etchevehere, president of the Sociedad Rural Argentina, chose to describe the country’s agricultural sector shortly before it began a five-day strike on 15 June. “International prices are good,” Etchevehere elaborated. “What is bad is domestic policy.” There has been little love lost between the government led by President Cristina Fernández and the agricultural community since a failed attempt to introduce a sliding scale of export tariffs in 2008, though the focus of this particular strike is unclear. The ‘Mesa de Enlace’, the umbrella group for the country’s four main farmers’…

In a ruling on 18 June, described gleefully by much of Argentina’s private media as “a lesson in the division of powers”, the supreme court struck down key elements of the federal government’s package of six laws designed to reform the judiciary. By six to one, the court ruled that “it is not possible that under the invocation of the defence of popular will, one can propose ignoring the judicial order; given that nothing could be further against the interests of the people than a constitutional transgression.” Elections to the council of magistrates, the most controversial part of the reform…