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Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador visited the municipality of La Concordia in the southern state of Chiapas on 2 August. La Concordia, like many other areas of Chiapas – particularly those close to the border with Guatemala – has seen a surge in high-profile violent incidents in recent months. López Obrador, who was in the municipality to inaugurate a new infrastructure project, said the efforts of his Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena) government to boost development in Chiapas would help to pacify the region, in keeping with his root causes-focused security strategy.

La Concordia was the site of a clash between criminal groups at the end of June in which at least 19 were killed. It also saw a fatal attack on a mayoral candidate and her entourage in May. López Obrador referenced these and other violent incidents by saying simply that “I have not liked what has been happening lately” and pledging to “look out for La Concordia”. The main purpose of his visit was to inaugurate a new bridge to link the municipality and others in the border region to state capital Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

However, it is hard to gloss over the security situation in Chiapas, which has steadily worsened over the past few years. This has prompted a crisis of displacement, particularly in the state’s border region with Guatemala which has been caught in a territorial dispute between the country’s largest drug trafficking organisations (DTOs), the Sinaloa DTO and the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) since 2021. According to the Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de las Casas (Frayba), a local human rights organisation, the violence resulting from this dispute forced the displacement of some 2,000 people (400 families) between 2021 and October 2022, with many more displaced since.

At the end of July, the local press reported that some 600 people had fled from Amatenango de la Frontera and other municipalities in the Chiapas border region. The incident grabbed headlines worldwide given the displaced chose to seek refuge over the border in Guatemala, rather than elsewhere in Mexico, reversing the region’s typical northward migration flow. Mexico’s Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena met with her Guatemalan counterpart, Carlos Ramiro Martínez, on 2 August to discuss the response to the incident. In a statement, Mexico’s foreign ministry (SRE) said the Mexican and Guatemalan delegations would carry out joint operations of humanitarian assistance and set up a consulate for Mexicans in Cuilco municipality in Guatemala’s department of Huehuetenango, where those fleeing Chiapas had taken refuge.

The fact that people are choosing to cross into Guatemala rather than remain in Chiapas is a reflection of just how severe the security situation has become and the lack of faith in the government’s ability to resolve the issues. Indeed, in a report released last year, Frayba stated that responses to the violence in Chiapas from state and federal governments “have consisted of a permanent omission”.

On 31 July, the Colectivo de Monitoreo Frontera Sur, a grouping of local civil society organisations, called for “urgent action” to address insecurity in Chiapas. The collective accused President López Obrador of downplaying the situation and placing the blame on the civilian population. It also noted that the strategy of temporarily sending in members of the armed forces or national guard (GN) was inefficient, given that criminal groups just returned once such forces were withdrawn. The collective stressed that investigative and intelligence work was required to dismantle the criminal groups and provide a more long-lasting solution.

Although displacement in the border region has become pronounced since 2021 due to the conflict between the Sinaloa DTO and the CJNG, Chiapas has a long history of forced displacement fuelled by violence. This harks back to the Zapatista uprising in 1994, led by the leftist indigenous insurgent group, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN). In the years following the uprising, many Zapatista communities and sympathisers were forcibly displaced by paramilitary groups, as issue that continues today [SSR-23-08]. Other displacement is fuelled by the eviction of those who have settled in natural protected areas or in areas containing strategic resources or where infrastructure projects such as dams have been planned. Such evictions are carried out by the State, formal policing forces, corporatist groups, and criminal organisations. Local political conflicts are a further source of forced displacement.

Tackling insecurity in Chiapas will be one of the major challenges facing President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum and her incoming public security minister, Omar García Harfuch. The pair have a good track record of reducing violent crime from their time working together in Mexico City (CDMX). However, Chiapas, with its communities spread out over mountains and rainforest and a complex, interconnecting set of conflicts, presents a whole other challenge.

Price rises

As well as disrupting businesses and Mexico’s economy in general, the violence of DTOs has trickled down to consumers too. Juan Carlos Anaya, an agricultural consultant, told Spanish newspaper El País on 3 August that between 15%-20% of recent food price rises were the impact of extortion and theft along the supply chain.

Displacement

According to Frayba, some 16,755 people were displaced in Chiapas between 2010 and October 2022. The trend of displacement has accelerated in recent years with Frayba noting that between 2018 and 2022, a total of 3,499 people were displaced from the municipality of Aldama and 5,023 from the municipality of Chalchihuitán, both in the highlands of Chiapas. A paramilitary group from the nearby municipality of Chenalhó, with which Aldama and Chalchihuitán were locked in a territorial dispute, was behind much of the displacement. Residents of Chenalhó have also been the victims of forced displacement, with Frayba registering 3,200 displaced people from Chenalhó and Pantelhó, another municipality in the highlands, in July 2021.

ARGENTINA | Blackouts. Argentina’s cabinet chief, Guillermo Francos, said on 22 September that if soaring temperatures led to a high demand for electricity, as expected, over the course of the southern hemisphere summer, there would have to be scheduled blackouts. “Regrettably there was not enough investment over the last few years, with the result that there will be insufficient power generation, meaning there will have to be scheduled blackouts,” Francos said on the local radio station Mitre.

Two days earlier, Máximo Kirchner, a federal deputy for the left-wing La Cámpora faction of the Peronist opposition Unión por la Patria (UP), had said there should “not be a single blackout with these tariffs in place”. After Franco’s announcement, Kirchner’s La Cámpora colleague, Deputy Vanesa Siley, said electricity tariffs had “doubled or more in some cases, for what?” She added that the government’s argument that it was putting up tariffs to improve the service was a fabrication.

The energy secretary, Eduardo Rodríguez Chirillo, subsequently took to social media on 24 September to stress that the blackouts would be “voluntary” and “for industry not for homes”. Rodríguez Chirillo said that the administration led by President Javier Milei could not in just nine months transform an electricity system inherited from the previous government that was “on the verge of collapse”, adding that putting an end to “energy populism” would not be painless. Rodríguez Chirillo argued, however, that having a discussion about blackouts three months in advance was a sign that “improvisation” was over and that planning and concrete measures were being put in place to protect residential users.

Scheduled blackouts will evoke painful memories of the 1980s in Argentina when rolling blackouts were commonplace. There have been no shortage of unscheduled blackouts in the country on hot summer days in recent years when demand has exceeded capacity, but scheduled blackouts, however they are dressed up, would be politically damaging for Milei, particularly as they are associated with countries like Cuba, which he refers to scathingly as a failed Communist state.

Development: On 6 October President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela suggested forming a new organisation of major oil producers whose founders would be Russia and Venezuela.

Significance: Chávez quickly said that this new organisation would not undermine the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) of which Venezuela is a founder member. Venezuela, Russia and Mexico acted together to drive up oil prices, by limiting production, in 1999 and 2000.

Key points:

• Chávez is talking vaguely of four or five countries joining the new organisation, which could undermine Saudi Arabia, a key US ally. Saudi Arabia acts as the swing producer in Opec, increasing production to stop prices rising and cutting production when prices are, in its view, too low.

• Chávez added that he intended to visit Russia as soon as his heath would allow. He added that he was feeling better every day and was in charge of things

Colombia & Venezuela | Staying on IACHR's blacklist. On 9 April Commissioner José de Jesús Orozco Henríquez, the Organization of American States (OAS)’s Rapporteur on the Rights of Human Rights Defenders who leads the OAS’s Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), presented the findings of the 2011 IACHR report. The four nations blacklisted in 2010 – Colombia, Cuba, Honduras and Venezuela – were also blacklisted in 2011, though in the case of the Andean countries they were included for very different reasons: Colombia was included because of the prevalence of “non-demobilised redoubts of paramilitary structures” and the continuation of extrajudicial executions “presumably [committed] by members of the public forces”; in the case of Venezuela, the report cited the continued problems caused by “structural situations”, amongst which it lists the ‘enabling laws’ “which affect the enjoyment of human rights”. The report also points at the “fragility of the judicial power and its lack of independence and impartiality” as well as “the abusive use of penal law”.

Venezuela | Costa Rican diplomat kidnapped. On 8 April, an attaché of the Costa Rican embassy in Caracas, Guillermo Cholele Caso, was kidnapped as he opened the gate to his garage in Caracas. It is believed that Cholele was the victim of one of the numerous express kidnappings that take place in Caracas every day, but as the police investigation goes into its second day authorities may have trouble explaining the “express” nature of this abduction. Since 2009, 10 foreign diplomats have been the victims of crime in Venezuela; only three weeks ago, the daughter of a Chilean diplomat was murdered by police in Maracaibo.

Es posible que no haya sido una maestra regañando a un colegial, pero sonaba como si lo fuera. Esta semana, en un intento por elevar la confianza en la economía argentina y disipar los temores del público de que los controles en el mercado de cambios impuestos por el gobierno son el paso previo a una masiva devaluación, la Presidenta Cristina Fernández anunció que ella convertiría sus depósitos a plazo fijo en dólares, a plazos fijos en pesos argentinos. En su última declaración de activos, que fue presentada en julio del 2011 pero se refiere al 2010, Fernández declaró ahorros por un total de US$3,06m en dólares, que aproximadamente constituía el 36% de sus ahorros totales. Esta semana, ella también les pidió a sus ministros y sus partidarios que hagan lo mismo, llamando al senador (y ex jefe de gabinete) Aníbal Fernández que muestre el camino.

La semana pasada, Aníbal dijo que los argentinos “necesitan cambiar su mentalidad y dejar de pensar en dólares”. Sus comentarios fueron altamente cuestionados por numerosos periodistas quienes, citando su declaración oficial de activos, señalaron el hecho de que el legislador tiene ahorros por un valor de al menos US$24.000, o 32% de todos sus ahorros. Cuando fue confrontado con esas cifras, él produjo embarazo a la administración perdiendo los estribos durante una entrevista en uno de los más importantes programas políticos de radio, presentado por la veterana periodista Magdalena Ruiz Guiñazú. “Yo compro dólares porque se me antoja. Es mi derecho, hago lo que quiero con mi plata,” dijo el incondicional senador Kirchnerista.

La frase fue criticada por oponentes y colegas por igual; la presidenta dijo durante un evento televisado ese mismo día: “¡Qué gracioso que estás hoy, Aníbal! ¿Qué tomaste, vivarachol esta mañana?” (el supuesto nombre dado a una supuesta medicina que “aviva” a la gente, que le provee de humor o pretendida gracia). Los asesores de Aníbal rápidamente trataron de negar que ella se estuviera refiriendo a su comentario sobre el dólar, pero la segunda reprimenda pública de la presidenta esta semana, decididamente, no dejó dudas.

El alcalde opositor de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, no pudo resistir la oportunidad de meterse en el debate: “Hice una recomendación al gobierno, que mantenga a Fernández silencioso por un tiempo. Eso será bueno para ellos [el gobernante Frente para la Victoria]”. Es posible que la Presidenta coincida –aunque ella nunca lo reconocería públicamente.

Cuando la Presidenta Fernández anunció la pesificación de sus ahorros, dijo que los políticos debían dar el ejemplo y buscó alrededor del salón a miembros de su gabinete; miró al secretario de comercio, Guillermo Moreno, pero él se encogió de hombros y dijo que no tenía ahorros en dólares. Entonces buscó a su tocayo Fernández: “Usted, Aníbal, es el primero en la fila, y con un bonete [el bonete es una especie de gorra terminada en punta que se colocaba antiguamente en algunas escuelas como castigo a alumnos que tenían un mal comportamiento]”.

Dolarizar o pesificar, esa es la cuestión

La Presidenta dijo que el cambio no era solamente simbólico, sino que también tenía sentido financiero pues los rendimientos en pesos de depósitos a plazo fijo son mucho más altos (están entre el 6,5% y el 17,5%, dependiendo del banco y los plazos del depósito) que los depósitos a plazo fijo en dólares (0,1% a 1,93%).

Sin embargo, los inversionistas que apostaron al dólar a fines de abril, y mantuvieron sus inversiones a través de mayo, obtuvieron los más altos rendimientos: el llamado ‘dólar azul’ lideró el camino con un rendimiento del 18,2%, seguido por el ‘dólar paralelo’ (16%); los bonos Boden 2012 denominados en dólares (15,8%) y los bonos Boden 2013 (10,4%); y el dólar oficial (1,4%). La compra de bonos se ha convertido en el pasatiempo favorito para los argentinos que desean poner las manos sobre dólares sin tener que pasar por el sistema de la agencia fiscal nacional (Afip) [IL-12-21].

Un problema para Fernández es que a medida que la confianza en la economía disminuye, hay pocas señales de que los argentinos prestarán atención a su pedido y cambiarán los dólares que ya poseen por pesos. De acuerdo con un informe de la firma consultora local AMF Economía para el diario La Nación, la venta de dólares de parte del público argentino en el primer trimestre del 2012 promedió los US$265m al mes, el nivel más bajo desde la debacle económica y financiera del 2001. El promedio mensual se mantuvo en US$780m entre el 2007 y octubre del 2011, cuando el gobierno introdujo los primeros controles de cambio; luego descendió a US$634m durante el cuarto trimestre del 2011.

La razón de esto es simple: aquellos quienes ya han asegurado la moneda extranjera no desean separarse de la misma, especialmente a través de los canales formales que tendrían que usar para cambiar la denominación de sus depósitos a plazos fijos. Esto se debe a que existe el temor de que ellos podrían no poder comprarlos de regreso a la tasa oficial de cambio y si pueden hacerlo, puede haber cambiado significativamente cuando decidan comprarlos de vuelta.

El problema es también que el banco central (BCRA) está convalidando la devaluación comprando dólares a los valores más altos de mercado durante el día de operación; durante las pasadas 48 horas (4-6-de junio) el BCRA ha convalidado un incremento de dos centavos (de AR$4,474/US$ a AR$4,496/US$), en tanto que hace un año, una devaluación de esta clase hubiera tenido lugar en el curso de un mes. Esto ha hecho que varios expertos locales concluyan que la tasa oficial de cambio debería ser, al menos, de AR$5/US$ para finales de año.

El Rodrigazo

Las expectativas de devaluación se están consolidando, y esta semana el economista que diseñó el plan de Argentina para emerger del colapso del 2001, Roberto Lavagna, escribió un artículo de opinión acerca del evento sobre el cual muchos están pensando, o mencionando en privado, pero evitándolo en público: el Rodrigazo.

“Mientras el gobierno rechaza la realidad que les contradiga a ellos [los funcionarios], en algunos círculos iluminados el sueño es que este mismo gobierno, u otro, produzca un Rodrigazo,” escribió Lavagna. Y siguió: “¿Se acuerdan de 1975 [y] el gobierno de una presidenta peronista [una referencia a María Estela ‘Isabelita’ Martínez de Perón]? Todo junto, todo rápido [hecho], supuestamente para ‘ordenar’ el caos de precios relativos” (ver abajo).

Déjà Vu del 2008

Los partidos en conflicto son los mismos; la medida que lo provocó y el líder que la dictó no lo son. El 31 de mayo, Daniel Scioli, el gobernador de la provincia de Buenos Aires, emitió un decreto ordenando la revaluación de todas las tierras en el distrito; horas más tarde, la legislatura provincial aprobó una reforma fiscal que incrementaba el impuesto a las propiedades rurales, el impuesto al ingreso bruto y al timbrado fiscal.

Scioli tenía pocas opciones a su disposición. Sin alguna forma de medida de emergencia fiscal, el gobernador no hubiese podido reunir lo necesario para cubrir la factura del pago de salarios de junio y julio para más de 500.000 trabajadores del sector público provincial, que incluye el llamado medio-aguinaldo de mediado de año. El fracaso en pagar hubiera convertido a Scioli en el primer gobernador en retrasar el pago de salarios al sector público desde el colapso económico de Argentina en el 2001.

Inmediatamente después de ser emitido el decreto, los productores de la provincia de Buenos Aires anunciaron una huelga de nueve días (comenzando el 1 de junio) y finalizando a la medianoche del domingo 10 de junio; el 6 de junio, las cuatro principales organizaciones nacionales de productores agrícolas anunciaron que comenzarían su propia huelga de siete días el 7 de junio. Con la excepción de bienes perecederos, ellos pararían todo el comercio de granos y ganados; la clase media urbana rápidamente se unió a la protesta, organizando los primeros cacerolazos de la segunda administración de Fernández el 31 de mayo y el 1 de junio.

• Isabel Perón

En junio de 1975, Isabel Perón designó como su ministro de economía a Celestino Rodrigo, que es recordado comúnmente por su severo plan de austeridad. Durante su administración de 50 días, el peso se devaluó un 100% en el mercado financiero y un 150% en el comercial; las tasas de los servicios públicos y el precio del combustible se elevaron un 189%; y la inflación se consolidó en tres cifras, un nivel que retuvo por varios años.

ECONOMY | Minimum wage approved. On 18 July both houses of congress approved the proposal made by the Sebastián Piñera government to set the new minimum wage at US$386, up from the current US$364. The approval by congress follows a lengthy negotiation process, which had exacerbated divisions within the ruling coalition’s more moderate Renovación Nacional (RN) and the ultra-conservative Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI). After the bill had been rejected in both houses, it was re-submitted through the so-called “presidential additive veto”, which requires fewer votes to pass. It was approved by 51-32 in the lower chamber and 15-1 in the upper house.

*** India blames “foreign elements” for north-eastern violence.  On 6 August, India’s Union Home Secretary RK Singh said there “could be some external elements behind the violence” between ethnic groups in India’s north-eastern state of Assam.  The implication was that some violent elements had links to Bangladesh.

More than 70 people have lost their lives in the clashes between Bodos and immigrant settlers in the Bodoland Territorial Administered Districts (BTAD) and over 500,000 have been made homeless.  Assam government officials say that the violence has affected more than 400 villages in an area of 8,000 sq km.  The district has a 136km border with Bangladesh which has been sealed.

India’s intelligence agencies are said to have placed 14 organizations under increased surveillance.  According to an Indian security source: "All these organizations have come into existence in the last 20 years... [and] many of them are believed to have external links, some are engaged in militant activities.”

The organizations mentioned as being under increased surveillance are all Muslim organizations, namely the Muslim Security Council of Assam, United Liberation Militia of Assam, Islamic Liberation Army of Assam, Muslim Volunteer Force, Muslim Liberation Army, Muslim Security Force, Islamic Sevak Sanng, Islamic United Reformation Protest of India, Revolutionary Muslim Commandos, Muslim Tiger Force, Muslim Liberation Front, Muslim Liberation Tigers of Assam, Muslim United Liberation Front of Assam, and the Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam.

Five organizations operating in the neighbouring state of Manipur are also said to be under surveillance by the Indian intelligence agencies: the Islamic National Front, Islamic Revolutionary Front, United Islamic Liberation Army, United Islamic Revolutionary Army, and the People's United Liberation Front.

*** Russia state media modifying Syria stance.  According to an analysis by the excellent BBC Monitoring Service, Russian state-controlled TV’s portrayal of the conflict in Syria “has changed slightly in the past week or two, with some reports presenting the opposition’s view of events and casting doubts on Syrian government claims”.

Although Rossiya 1 and Channel One have not altered their coverage as much as Gazprom-owned NTV, continuing to highlight rebel atrocities, they have started showing rebel fighters giving their version of events.  NTV has carried a series of reports stressing that Syrian government assurances on the position in Damascus, Aleppo, and Homs is “contradictory” and that it is “not clear who to believe”.

Development: On 3 December Betzabé Zegarra, the president of the regional supreme electoral court (TSE) in the eastern Bolivian region of Tarija, announced that Tarija’s interim governor, Lino Condori, would remain in his post for the remainder of the current term.

Significance: The announcement puts paid to speculation caused by doubts as to whether Mario Cossío, Condori’s predecessor, who was suspended in December 2010 over corruption allegations, would resign or not. Zegarra told reporters that the deadline for Cossío to present his resignation and trigger fresh elections was 29 November. The announcement leaves the region in the hands of President Evo Morales’s Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), with which Condori is aligned.

Key points:

• Unlike his other opposition regional peer, Beni’s Ernesto Suárez, who was also suspended for alleged corruption but has since resigned, triggering fresh elections, Cossío insists that he will not step down on “moral grounds”. Cossío, who received asylum in Paraguay for what he claimed was political persecution, maintains he was a victim of Morales’s judicialisation of politics.

• Cossío’s refusal to step down has caused problems within the regional opposition. The national head of the right-wing Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR), Johnny Torres, said that if Cossío, who in April 2010 beat his MAS rival by 49%-44%, refused to quit, the party would leave the regional opposition alliance Camino al Cambio (CC), which brought Cossío to power. Torres said the decision was tantamount to siding with the MAS.

• Of Bolivia’s nine regions, Tarija is of particular strategic importance given it is where some of the country’s main gas fields lie. According to figures from the La Paz-based think tank, Fundación Milenio, Tarija is the main export producing region accounting for 33.6% or US$1.7bn of the country’s total exports in the first half of 2012, up from 26.8% in 2011.

Decriminalising personal use

Before the troika of pro-reform presidents took their case to the UN, three countries — Colombia, Uruguay and Brazil — had already taken steps to reform their own drugs policies. All three initiatives involve degrees of decriminalisation of personal drug use.

Colombia has reversed the ‘recriminalisation’ introduced by President Santos’s predecessor, Álvaro Uribe, and its leading law officer is proposing to have the new policy endorsed by a constitutional referendum. Uruguay has embarked upon a course that could well have far-reaching repercussions across the hemisphere: the takeover by the state of the production and marketing of cannabis. Brazil has set in motion a process that could lead soon to congress debating a law to decriminalise personal drug use.

Colombia: addiction as a health problem

On 31 July President Juan Manuel Santos promulgated a law that classifies drug addiction as a public health problem which the state is obliged to address, through treatment and prevention. This is the third major development in drug policy in 18 years. In 1994 the constitutional court ruled that the law prohibiting drug consumption was unconstitutional. In July 2009, the supreme court followed up with a ruling that possession of drugs for personal use ‘cannot be subject to sanction [when consumption takes place] in the exercise of their personal and intimate rights [and] the defendant did not affect the rights of others’.

Five months later President Álvaro Uribe neutralised this ruling by securing approval for a constitutional law which forbade possession and consumption of narcotic or psychotropic substances except under medical prescription’. This, however, did not quite criminalise them: only administrative sanctions were envisaged.

The new law says, ‘Be it recognised that the consumption, abuse and addiction to psychoactive substances, licit or illicit, is a matter of public health and welfare of the family, the community and individuals.’ It stipulates that addicts must be treated as afflicted by an illness, and gives them the right to request and receive ‘comprehensive attention from the state’.

This attention is to be part and parcel of the mandatory health plan (POS). Initially this provision of the new law will be applied to minors, identified as the most vulnerable segment of the population, but coverage will be extended progressively to the entire universe of addicts.

Decriminalisation of consumption and possession of drugs for personal use does not entail an easing of the policy to pursue the traffickers and locate and destroy drug crops and processing labs through actions by both the police and the military. In the same month in which he promulgated the new law Santos announced a new plan to keep up the pressure on the traffickers and growers of drug crops through eradication by manual uprooting and fumigation, adding what was described as a more ‘integral’ approach designed, on the one hand, to disrupt all stages of the drugs business, and on the other to set in motion development programmes to replace the drug crops.

Procurator-general Alejandro Ordóñez took matters a step further on 17 August when he announced at Colombia’s first conference on drug policy (hosted by the Universidad de los Andes): ‘In my capacity as head of the public prosecution service I have proposed the submission of a bill combined with a constitutional referendum’ so the public at large can decide on decriminalisation of consumption. He said this was not intended to reverse the supreme court’s ruling but ‘to take the only decision possible within the rule of law.’

Ordóñez rejected a proposal made days earlier by Bogotá mayor Gustavo Petro to establish controlled consumption centres for addicts, in order to lower the incidence of criminal activity. Petro had suggested offering the addicts two rehabilitation options, one ‘with personal autonomy’, the other, ‘if the addict is not yet capable of exercising that autonomy’ by supplying ‘medication that mitigates anxiety’.

Uruguay: ‘nationalisation’ of cannabis

On 8 August the government of President José Mujica submitted to congress a bill with a single, three-paragraph article, that gives the state control of the entire production and marketing of cannabis. The law says that the state ‘will take control of and regulate the activities of import, production, acquisition in any mode, storage, market and distribution of marijuana and its derivates.’ It will do this ‘within the framework of a damage-control policy [that] alerts the population about the consequences and harmful effects of the use of marijuana.’ Diego Cánepa, secretary of the presidency, explained that the provision for ‘import’ refers to purchase abroad of cannabis seed.

Julio Calzada, head of the Junta Nacional de Drogas (JND, the national drugs board), noted that though this bill is not the first in the world to decriminalise the production and use of cannabis, it is the first to provide for state control of the entire production chain. Its main aim, he said, is to wrest the control of this market from the traffickers, who run a business with an estimated annual turnover of US$30-40m. In his usual style, President Mujica put it more bluntly: ‘We’ll steal the market with better prices and quality than you can get on the black market.’

Mujica said state involvement was necessary because uncontrolled cultivation, ostensibly for personal use, ‘must be controlled in order to prevent this from ending up in outbound contraband.’ He suggested from the outset that clubs of smokers could be authorised, ‘under control’, to grow their own cannabis. Mujica cited as a possible model the cannabis clubs of Spain, in which associations of smokers are in charge of ‘producing, selling and registering consumers.’

There is in Uruguay a small group, the Asociación de Estudios del Cannabis del Uruguay (AECU) that promotes ‘self-cultivation’. JND’s Calzada has said this is an option, but it cannot be left to regulate itself. ‘It is possible if self-cultivation is understood as something regulated by the state, for example by quotas.’

Though the government enjoys a comfortable enough majority in congress to ensure approval of the bill, Mujica promised to conduct a survey of public opinion and, if state control of the cannabis business were rejected, to withdraw the bill. Several private surveys have shown up to 60% of respondents opposing broadly defined decriminalisation.

The bill will not go unchallenged in congress. Luis Alberto Heber, leader of the opposition Partido Nacional (Blanco), has said that though he favours finding ‘a safety valve’ for cannabis growers and users, the brief text of the bill leaves many important questions unanswered, and puts the state in the ‘regrettable position of becoming a producer and vendor of cannabis.’

Among the questions Heber wants answered are the following: ‘From whom will cannabis be bought? Will it be imported? On what land will it be cultivated? Will the vendors be public officials? What will the sales network look like?’  Even before responses come in his position is, ‘For me this decision is not good, it is nonsensical.’

Uruguay is one of the very few countries that never penalised drug possession for personal use, leaving it up to the judges to decide what amounts could be deemed to be for personal use. However, the cultivation and sale of cannabis are penalised with prison terms ranging from 20 months to 10 years.

On 20 August Mujica ventured that 150 hectares would be enough to satisfy domestic demand for cannabis. Details of the government’s calculations in this regard are not available, but the media have calculated, on an estimate of 75,500 habitual users of cannabis, with an authorised purchase quota of 30 grams a month, an annual production of more than 27,000 kilos would be required.

Brazil: public consultation

On 23 August the lower chamber of Brazil’s congress published on its e-democracia website a proposal for a bill that would decriminalise the possession and cultivation of drugs for personal use. Though embracing all drugs, it sets a self-use quota of 25 grams a day, as in Portugal, whose legislation has been taken as a model. The proposal is endorsed by 113,000 signatures; it will be available to the public on the chamber’s website until the end of 2012. The aim is to reach by 2013 a million endorsements, enough to set in motion a debate on the bill.

The commission that drafted the bill was assisted by members of the police and of the Catholic and evangelical churches and headed by Pedro Gadelha, president of the Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz, a foundation dedicated to public health matters) and the Comissão Brasileira sobre Drogas e Democracia (CBDD).

‘The idea,’ says Gadelha, ‘is that drug use should cease to be a police matter and move over to the area of health [...]  We are against trafficking, but it is important to distinguish the criminal from the users, for whom we advocate administrative measures aimed at rehabilitation.’ Repression of trafficking and organised crime, he says, must continue. Another leading advocate of decriminalisation is Pedro Vieira Abramovay, a former federal justice secretary fired in 2011 for having proposed alternative sentences for small traffickers, now active in Brazil as coordinator of the Banco de Injustiças and internationally as president of Avaaz, an organisation that encourages grassroots campaigns. Abramovay says the proposed bill provides for the Agência de Vigilância Sanitária (Anvisa) to determine the maximum amounts deemed to be for personal use, and provides for the user to be subject to administrative action.

POLITICS | New information & communication superintendent. On 8 October journalist Carlos Ochoa was picked as Ecuador’s first superintendent of information and communication by the council on citizen participation and social control (CPCCS), a fourth branch of the State established by the 2008 constitution tasked with designating authorities including the attorney and prosecutor generals, among others. Ochoa, who has held various high-level posts, including head of news at state-run Gama TV channel, will be in charge of overseeing the enforcement of the new controversial media law, which was approved in June last. His appointment was approved by five votes in favour and two against.

POLITICS| Maduro requests special powers. On 8 October Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro presented a request for the national assembly to award him special powers to issue laws by decree for a 12-month period so as to deal with the country’s economic difficulties and growing official corruption. In his speech before the assembly, Maduro said that the Venezuelan economy was going through a particularly difficult time as its “production apparatus has been heavily hit by a series of distortions such as speculation, hoarding, contraband and the illegal currency market”. As a result Maduro said he was asking for decree powers to “deepen, accelerate and fight for the installation of a new political ethic… to build a new socialist ethic” in an effort to revert “the logic that makes corruption reproduce itself every day”. While the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) has a solid majority in the 165-member national assembly, with 98 seats it is just one vote short of the qualified two-thirds majority needed to approve the measure and it is rumoured to be in intense negotiations with opposition deputies in a bid to secure the additional vote.

The month from roughly 10 December 2013 to 10 January 2014 was a pretty miserable time for approximately 13m people living in the Greater Buenos Aires area. A record heat wave saw temperatures soar, often as high as 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit). The power grid could not cope, and power cuts rippled throughout the city. The government declared a state of emergency. Many neighbourhoods suffered repeated outages; the situation was particularly bad in high-rise flats, where water supplies were also cut off. Tempers flared, with many residents building street barricades and demonstrating their anger.

Why did this happen? The government, under mounting political pressure, pointed its finger at the two private sector companies that supply Greater Buenos Aires, Edenor (locally-owned) and Edesur (controlled by Endesa of Spain). Cabinet Chief Jorge Capitanich accused them of “negligence” and threatened nationalisation: “if they aren’t able to provide proper service the government will. There are no excuses,” he said. Planning Minister Julio De Vido, who insisted there could be no question of raising electricity rates to ‘ration’ demand, made similar statements.

This was followed by an order from Enre, the electricity regulator, that the two companies should pay compensation to customers who suffered cuts on a scale of 490-870 pesos (US$74-US$132), or double in the case of repeated power interruptions. It is thought this will cost Edesur ARS221m (US$33.4m) and Edenorte ARS77.5m (US$11.7m). In addition, regulatory fines have been levied of ARS17.9m pesos (US$2.7m) for Edesur and ARS8m pesos (US$1.2m) for Edenorte. Finally, the government has also seized control of FOCEDE, a fund for maintenance and expansion of the electricity network previously managed by the companies.

In public, the companies have had a relatively muted response, but in private they have argued that they provided sufficient power: the fault lay with antiquated infrastructure and the insufficient interconnection system. When power demand surged, as hundreds of thousands of air conditioners were turned on, many wires were overloaded and exploded, cutting supply.

Critics of the government note that there is a fundamental problem with its business model for the power sector. Since the economic crisis of 2002 – in other words for over a decade – most electricity tariffs have been frozen, failing to keep up with inflation. Under the existing model the government subsidises power supplies, just as it does petrol and fuel prices. According to ASAP, a think-tank on public sector finances, government energy subsidies rose 72% in the first nine months of 2013 to around US$9.15bn.

To keep this ultimately unsustainable model in place, there has been a sharp reduction over the years in investment and maintenance. That, say the critics, is the real problem. Mauricio Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires (and a centre-right opponent of the federal government) said “we have a government that instead of building solutions, always looks for those responsible… when there is no investment we reach these situations, which are here to stay and will take a long time to resolve.”

BRAZIL | Rio gets internet domain. On 25 August Rio de Janeiro’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, revealed that the city is set to become the first in South America to boast its own internet domain- ‘.rio’. According to Paes his municipal government is in the final stages of registering the new domain with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organisation responsible for the maintenance of unique identifiers related to the namespaces of the Internet, and that this process would be finalised by January 2015, ahead of the 450th anniversary of Rio’s foundation.

Noting that other cities such as New York, London and Paris already have their own domains, Paes said that “what we want is to develop a brand for the city”. Registration in the new domain will cost US$30 a year and all interested parties have until 29 December to apply for a .rio internet address.

CHILE | Advancing energy policy agenda. On 26 August Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet inaugurated the ‘El Arrayán’ wind farm in Coquimbo region, which with 50 wind turbines and an installed electricity generating capacity of 115 megawatts (MW) is now the country’s largest.

Since assuming office for the second time back in March, Bachelet has said that tackling Chile’s energy sector crisis would be one of her government’s main priorities. In order to do so her government has come up with an ‘energy policy agenda’ designed to tackle the sector’s high operational costs and boost domestic electricity production levels by providing greater incentives for investment in the sector [WR-14-20].

Among other things, the seven-point energy policy agenda gives the State a new planning role in the energy sector in the hope that this will allow it to diversify the national electricity production matrix by promoting increased use of non-conventional renewable energy (NCRE) sources (which include the likes of wind, solar and geothermal power sources).

In a short speech delivered at the opening of ‘El Arrayán’, Bachelet said that the new wind farm would help her government achieve the objective set out in its energy policy agenda of increasing NCRE electricity generating capacity by 45% during her current four-year term in office until 2018 so that NCRE electricity accounts for 20% of Chile’s total energy production by 2024.

“The launching of this wind farm is a step towards the objective that we have set ourselves as a country in the energy policy agenda,” Bachelet said, pointing out that ‘El Arrayán’ has the potential to supply electricity to some 200,000 homes. Bachelet noted that her government had already set aside US$3.5bn to invest in ‘clean’ energy generation projects and that so far this year some 600MW of NCRE-generated installed electricity capacity had been added to the energy matrix compared to 291MW last year. “We have reason to be optimistic, because this year there has been an important increase in the development of NCRE projects in the country,” she said.

Adding that there are another 14 NCRE generating projects with a projected generation capacity of 1,526MW currently at the evaluation stage, Bachelet rhetorically asked, “What better sign of confidence can there be than Chilean and foreign investors being prepared to present new projects or expand existing ones and choosing our country to generate new business?” She then urged Chile’s energy sector entrepreneurs to continue investing in this type of clean energy production, declaring that “these will become the foundation for the country’s future economic growth”.

Interestingly, the northern region of Coquimbo (Region IV), a major tourism destination, appears to have become the centre of the NCRE investments, with the region now being the home to 15 different NCRE energy generation projects (eight wind, four solar and three hydroelectric).

Last month the El Pueblo Primero (EPP) coalition government led by President Juan Carlos Varela approved a new law cracking down on money laundering, terrorism financing and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in Panama. Aimed at getting Panama off the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF)’s grey list, the bill’s approval – a declared priority for Varela – is just one of recent moves aimed at illustrating his government’s commitment to transparency.

The need to strengthen financial integrity was flagged up as the “most immediate priority” facing Panama by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which sent a delegation to the country between 3 and 13 March to conduct an annual Article IV consultation.

On 27 April President Varela promulgated the new law – which replaces legislation dating back to 2000 - five days after its approval by Panama’s 71-member unicameral legislature. The fruit of consultations with the private sector, which began in the third quarter of 2014, the landmark legislation toughens supervision of various non-financial sectors, requiring lawyers, real estate brokers, casinos and construction firms, among others, to report suspicious transactions. With the approval of the new law, the economy & finance ministry (MEF) reports that Panama has complied with 70% of the plan put in place to remove the country from the FATF’s grey list.

Moving against Martinelli

The efforts by the EPP government to strengthen fiscal transparency came the same month that the supreme court (CSJ) officially launched a probe into former president, Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014), for alleged corruption that took place in the government’s social fund (PAN) during his administration. This after the three-member national electoral court (TE) voted to strip Martinelli of the immunity from prosecution he enjoyed as president of his Cambio Democrático (CD) political party, a move announced on 9 April.

The investigations, which began last year [RC-14-10], are one of the biggest into official corruption in recent years. Out of the country since late January and believed to be in the US, Martinelli appeared to anticipate the TE’s move against him. The previous day he presented a complaint against the Panamanian State before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) for alleged violation of his judicial rights. At the end of the previous month, the local media reported that Martinelli had “provisionally” handed over the CD party leadership to Rómulo Roux, his former foreign minister (2012-2014), with internal elections scheduled to take place on 25 October in order to elect a new leadership committee.

Allegations pile up

Corruption allegations against Martinelli’s former ministers continue to come thick and fast. Most recently, on 12 May, one of his closest allies, former MEF head and CD treasurer, Frank De Lima (2011-2014), was detained in a police cell in Ancón, a district near the Panama Canal, over alleged corruption which took place at the PAN. While the alleged corruption at the PAN is thought to run to some US$45m, this month President Varela told the national daily, La Prensa, that the total cost to the State of corruption committed under the Martinelli government could be as much as US$1bn.

As well as De Lima, other former Martinelli government ministers under investigation include: Guillermo Ferrufino (social development); Lucy Molinar (education); Federico José Suárez (public works); as well as the former deputy minister of the presidency, María Fábrega. Two former PAN directors, Rafael Guardia Jaén (2012-2014) and Giacomo Tamburelli (2009-2012), have also been detained. An arrest warrant has also been issued for Martinelli’s former private secretary, Adolfo 'Chichi' De Obarrio, whose whereabouts are unknown.

• International plaudits

The anti-corruption moves by the Juan Carlos Varela government against its predecessor have come in for international praise. On 11 March in remarks made at the opening in Panama of the international trade fair, Expocomer 2015, José Ugaz, chair of the Berlin-based NGO Transparency International (TI), hailed the Varela government’s anti-corruption efforts and noted that the Ricardo Martinelli administration was “questioned for serious acts of corruption”. More recently, on 8 April, in his address to a forum of civil society organisations, one of the events being held in conjunction with the Summit of the Americas, US President Bill Clinton (1993-2001), congratulated Panama on its recent anti-corruption drive.

El impulso para iniciar el juicio político contra la Presidenta Dilma Rousseff se ha detenido, al menos temporalmente, por un fallo de la corte suprema. A última hora en la tarde del 8 de diciembre, el magistrado del Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), Luis Edson Fachin, anunció que todo el proceso debía suspenderse hasta que la STF en pleno pueda dictaminar el 16 de diciembre sobre la legalidad de las actuaciones en marcha hasta ahora. Mientras que el gobierno le dará la bienvenida al escrutinio extra que la corte ahora aplicará a los rápidos acontecimientos en la cámara baja del congreso federal, también lamentará el hecho de que sus esperanzas de ver el problema resuelto rápidamente, y en su favor, retroceden con rapidez.

El secretario de la cámara baja del congreso federal, Beto Mansur, del Partido Republicano Brasileiro (PRB), dedicó el 3 de diciembre tres horas y media para dar lectura el requerimiento de juicio político de 300 páginas presentado ante el pleno de la cámara baja federal. Iniciando así el proceso oficial para enjuiciar a la Presidenta Rousseff. El siguiente paso era la formación de un comité especial de juicio político, en teoría, dentro de las 48 horas de haberse leído el requerimiento. Durante el fin de semana del 5-6 de diciembre, los partidos políticos de todas las tendencias discutieron quienes entre sus diputados deberían formar parte del comité de 65 miembros.

Aunque la votación para formar el comité debía comenzar el 7 de diciembre, fue de nuevo sujeto a otro retraso más por parte del presidente de la cámara baja, Eduardo Cunha, como parte de sus intentos para posponer la investigación del comité de ética sobre su propia conducta. Cuando finalmente comenzó, el día siguiente, la sesión del congreso degeneró rápidamente en un caos. Se suponía que los diputados votarían por uno de los dos grupos de candidatos, quienes formarían el grueso del comité. La lista uno, el bloque oficialista, constaba de 49 diputados de 20 partidos; la lista dos, el bloque pro-juicio político, que consistía de 39 diputados de 13 partidos. Una vez votado, los restantes miembros del comité serían designados en la sesión del 9 de diciembre. Esto, sin embargo, ahora no sucederá.

Cunha decidió que la votación debía ser secreta. Jandira Feghali, la líder del Partido Comunista do Brasil (PCdoB), aliado al gobierno, le preguntó al presidente de la cámara porqué debía ser así. Cunha ignoró la pregunta y ordenó que se inicie la votación, provocando que los airados diputados anti-juicio político intentaran físicamente frenar que el grupo pro-juicio político votase. Cunha amenazó con llamar a la seguridad y prometió responder a la pregunta de Feghali por escrito, más tarde. Cuando se contaron los votos, 272 habían votado a favor del bloque anti-gobierno, mientras que solamente 199 habían votado por el grupo pro-gobierno.

Al final, sin embargo, el voto puede ser ahora irrelevante. Unas horas más tarde, Fachin aceptó un recurso presentado por el PCdoB para examinar la cuestión de por qué la votación se llevó a cabo en secreto, así como otras cuestiones de procedimiento relativas a la selección de los diputados en los grupos. No se podrá hacer más nada con relación al juicio político ahora, hasta que el STF se reúna la próxima semana.

En cierto modo, el gobierno estará satisfecho de que la decisión del TSF le da más tiempo para preparar su defensa; por otra parte, estará irritado por otro retraso en los procedimientos. El gobernante de Izquierda Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) está desesperado por ver que el proceso termine lo más pronto posible, actualmente confiado en que tiene los votos en la cámara baja del congreso para impedir que el juicio político tenga éxito. Teme que mientras más se alargue el proceso, la posibilidad de un aún más deterioro en la economía doméstica sea mayor, junto con un posible malestar social. En medio de este escenario, el apoyo a Rousseff podría debilitarse. Con este fin, el gobierno está presionando para cancelar el receso legislativo de Navidad, pero no está claro si tendrá éxito en esto.

• El escándalo de la Fifa

El 3 de diciembre la Fiscal General de EU, Loretta Lynch, anunció que otro grupo de 19 ejecutivos de la Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) han sido imputados, incluido el ex presidente de la federación del fútbol brasilero (CBF), Ricardo Teixeira, y su actual presidente, Marco Polo del Nero. Como ambos hombres son ciudadanos brasileros, ellos no pueden ser extraditados. Los abogados brasileros están analizando si ellos podrían ser procesados por el delito de evasión fiscal.

PANAMA | Teachers stage first strike under Varela. Last week Panama’s umbrella teachers’ union, Unión Nacional de Educadores Panameños (Unep), began its first nationwide strike since the Partido Panameñista (PPA)-led El Pueblo Primero (EPP) coalition government led by President Juan Carlos Varela took office in July 2014.

Grouping together 17 separate unions, Unep was calling for higher salaries and more spending on education. The strike, which began on 18 July, was called off six days later after Unep inked a deal with a high-level ministerial delegation which yielded significant government concessions.

Under the agreement, teachers will receive a monthly increase of US$300 from July 2017, in line with Unep’s demands. The government had initially offered a monthly increase of US$150 from July 2017 and the same again from July 2018. In addition to a guarantee that those who went on strike would not face administrative or discriminatory reprisals, the deal also incorporates Unep’s call for the government to spend 6% of GDP on education (up from the government’s initial offer of 5.5%).

The hydrocarbons ministry announced on 25 August that international auditors would be brought in to help formally revise the technical and financial terms of five major energy projects in the country. All the contracts were awarded by the previous government, exacerbating the very public spat between President Lenín Moreno and his predecessor Rafael Correa (2007-2017).

These five projects include Ecuador’s main Esmeraldas refinery, which faces closure for 45 days for essential repairs, according to Hydrocarbons Minister Carlos Pérez. Pérez in mid-August said that the refinery, recently upgraded at a cost of just over US$2bn, was in a “critical” state. Most critically, serious problems have been identified with the main catalytic cracking unit, the core of the unit. The refinery is also currently unable to process its sulphur emissions risking environmental pollution, while there have also been rolling problems with the main electric power generator.

Esmeraldas has a refining capacity of 110,000 barrels per day (bpd). Its planned seven-week closure will cost up to US$1.4bn a day, according to Pérez. The stoppage will also oblige the state oil company Petroamazonas to purchase additional imports of oil derivatives to serve the domestic market, which will significantly push up the cash-strapped country’s import bill for the duration.

Also facing audit is the planned Pacific refinery (on which over US$1.5bn has already been spent to date), as well as the US$85m Bajo Alto LNG plant, the US$623m Pascuales-Cuenca multi-use pipeline (awarded to the Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht), and the US$607m Monteverde-El Chorrillo LPG pipeline and gas terminal, 97km west of the coastal city of Guayaquil. In total, these five concessions have cost the state US$5bn to date. Depending on the audit, Ecuador may now seek compensation from those companies that carried out the work. This includes 10 local and foreign companies awarded contracts for the Esmeraldas upgrade.

Along with the main investigation into Odebrecht’s bribery of senior officials to secure major works contracts, plus other suspected cases of public procurement-related corruption, this process will do little to ease investor concerns about doing business in Ecuador.

Foreign direct investment (FDI), which remained stagnant at less than 1% of GDP throughout Correa’s decade in office, was just US$176m in the first quarter, according to preliminary balance of payments data from the central bank (BCE). Despite official efforts to drum up interest in the mining and manufacturing sectors, investors remain wary.

Even as Esmeraldas stalls, Petroamazonas gets output up

Petroamazonas produced 444,000 bpd of oil on average in the first seven months, 78% of total national output. This reflected the company’s sustained efforts to boost stagnant output by opening up new fields, including the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) protected Amazon reserve. (By contrast, output by private producers remains in sustained decline).

Having announced that it would not stick to its Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) commitment to lower output by 26,000 bpd to 522,000, Ecuador’s total national output was 541,000 bpd in July, not far off the 548,000 bpd it was producing before the Opec quotas took effect in January. First half export data indicated why the new Moreno government opted to break with its Opec quota. Oil export earnings came in at just US$3.3bn, lower than in the same periods of 2016 and 2015, and well down on the US$7.3bn reported in the first half of 2014 (before the global oil price shock hit). Having inherited a fiscal deficit of 7.5% of GDP, the finance ministry said that the government had no option but to increase oil sales beyond the agreed Opec quota.

• Glas travel ban

Accepting a request by the attorney general’s office, the national court of justice has imposed a travel ban on Vice-president Jorge Glas, who is under investigation in relation to the Odebrecht case. Ten other individuals under investigation in relation to the case, including Glas’s uncle, have already been put under preventative detention. As elected vice-president, however, Glas, recently stripped of his official functions by President Moreno, cannot be remanded. Alleging a right-wing conspiracy to tarnish the Citizens’ Revolution, Glas denies all the accusations against him and insists that he intends to remain in Ecuador to clear his name.

After facing widespread criticism for the use of military force against protesters in November 2019, Jeanine Áñez’s interim government has come to recognise judicial action as its most valuable weapon for dealing with its opponents, most notably the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) of former president Evo Morales (2006-2019), which still controls both houses of the legislative assembly and commands considerable popular support.

For years, critics of MAS and Morales condemned the use of Bolivia’s judicial institutions to attack political opponents. However, after just two months in power, Áñez seems to have picked up where Morales left off, targeting him and many of his allies with a range of legal campaigns. On 8 January, Mathías Kutschel of the anti-corruption programme ‘Lucha Contra la Corrupción’ announced the opening of embezzlement investigations into 592 officials who served under Morales, alleging that over B$2bn (US$289.4m) of public funds had been diverted away from state institutions since 2006.

However, many of the interim government’s prominent targets left the country after Morales was removed from power on 10 November (WR-19-45), including Morales himself, currently protected by refugee status in Argentina. The interim government has appealed to foreign governments to support its investigations, but in the meantime it is focusing on those who remain: former interior minister Carlos Romero (2012-2019) was taken to testify on one such corruption case upon leaving hospital on 14 January. Interim interior minister Arturo Murillo insists Romero was not forced to attend, but his lawyer condemned the lack of an arrest warrant, and the crowd of government supporters who surrounded Romero’s house, supposedly to prevent him from leaving the country.

Interim justice minister Álvaro Coimbra announced a further charge of sedition against Morales himself on 13 January, adding to accusations of terrorism and sedition in December. This latest charge was in response to a comment by Morales calling for the formation of “militias, like in Venezuela”, to challenge the armed forces, should the interim government revert to the repressive tactics of November. Morales insisted that his words had been taken out of context, and that his intention had been to promote the protection of indigenous communities from violence, rather than to provoke further aggression from the armed forces. And yet this statement was reflective of an increasing militancy in MAS rhetoric towards the interim government, seemingly completing their role reversal.

On 11 January, a ‘Unity Pact’ meeting of indigenous organisations announced that protests would resume from 22 January, the scheduled end of the interim government’s constitutional mandate, if Áñez refused to step aside. Andrónico Rodríguez, a contender for the MAS candidacy who has proven popular with the party’s indigenous base, warned that the current phase of “peaceful resistance against fascism” will soon be replaced by direct action. Not all of the interim government have shown signs of learning any lessons from November – interim defence minister Fernando López responded to Rodríguez by saying the armed forces “will do what they have to do” to maintain order, and later promised to “eliminate” any groups formed in response to Morales’ apparent call to arms.

Áñez herself has seemed more concerned with the electoral threat posed by MAS than any impending protests, and she has sought to mobilise international support in her favour after setbacks over human rights abuses and the diplomatic breakdown involving Spain and Mexico. However, she will be well aware that a return to military violence will eliminate any goodwill that may still remain regarding the extension of her mandate.

• Jorge Quiroga

Former president Jorge Quiroga (2001-2002) announced on 8 January his intention to run for the presidency, stepping down from his role as the interim government’s human rights delegate to the international community. Áñez warned that the ever-increasing number of candidates risks splitting the vote, recognising that the best chance of beating MAS is through a run-off vote, which would not take place if the MAS candidate – due to be announced on 19 January – was to secure a 10% lead in the first round.

At the annual opening session of the supreme court (TSJ) on 31 January, Venezuela’s de facto president Nicolás Maduro commented that “it is time to accept that there are things here that do not work, not because of [US President Donald] Trump, but because of us”. Maduro was referring primarily to the Venezuelan judicial system, and attributing blame to the country as a whole rather than his government in particular – but such a statement would nonetheless have seemed impossible just months ago, and is the latest indication of his desire to start a dialogue that might end the sanctions that are weighing down the Venezuelan economy.

There are even growing indications of Maduro’s willingness to engage in economic liberalisation, sacrificing all ideological principles in an effort to end the sanctions. On 4 February, news agency Reuters reported that Venezuelan banks are being allowed to accumulate supplies of US dollars in cash, free from government currency controls, to counteract hyperinflation. On 5 February Maduro went a step further, approving regulations allowing all companies to issue securities in foreign currencies. This follows speculation in January that the vast international debt owed by the state-owned oil company Pdvsa might be serviced by a programme of de facto privatisation.

• Pdvsa

Leandro Domínguez, an opposition deputy in Luis Parra’s Maduro-backed national assembly, confirmed on 28 January that talks are underway over reforms that would allow private companies majority ownership of Venezuelan oil extraction projects. Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft is thought to be the most likely participant.

Maduro had long criticised opponents for suggesting exactly such measures, and there are no indications that his economic ideology has suddenly changed. Rather, this all seemed part of an effort to subvert the impact of US sanctions, or even to see them removed completely, evidenced by his persistent appeals to Trump for a dialogue between the two countries. Opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s struggle to secure a meeting with Trump on his international tour had been heralded by some in Maduro’s administration as a sign of waning support for Guaidó’s claim to the interim presidency of Venezuela, but a last-minute invitation to Washington seemingly sounded the death knell for Maduro’s reconciliatory ambitions.

Guaidó was a guest at Trump’s ‘State of the Union’ address on 4 February, and was received at the White House the next day. Trump’s description of Maduro as “an illegitimate ruler, a tyrant who brutalises his people” shows that hoped-for negotiations are no closer than before, and a press statement issued after the meeting indicated that further sanctions are forthcoming, with foreign companies involved in Venezuela’s oil industry mentioned as a likely target. Guaidó’s international tour had been extended in the hope of securing this valuable publicity boost, but a return to Venezuela is presumably now imminent, along with a revival of direct confrontations between government and opposition –  starting with the question of whether Guaidó will be allowed into the country.

IACHR delegation blocked

The government’s refusal to allow a human rights delegation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to enter Venezuela could be interpreted as a warning to Guaidó that Maduro is not afraid to exclude his opponents. IACHR president Esmeralda Arosemena de Troitiño’s request to explore human rights abuses in the country was approved by a representative of Guaidó, but denied by Maduro’s government, which rejected the mandate of the IACHR, an autonomous entity in the Organization of American States (OAS), in Venezuela, after the country’s withdrawal from the OAS in 2017.

After being blocked from boarding a flight from Panama to Venezuela on 4 February, the delegation will instead meet Venezuelan opposition figures and victims of human rights abuses in the Colombian city of Cúcuta. De Troitiño has repeatedly tried to visit Venezuela, even promising in 2019 to act “from the perspective of human rights, not from a political evaluation perspective,” but Maduro continues to regard the IACHR as a political enemy.

The agenda for this mission was to meet victims of Venezuela’s economic crisis, including those in hospital affected by medical shortages, and political opponents who have accused the Maduro government of human rights abuses. Another member of the delegation, Edison Lanza, commented that “this sends a very negative signal because it says that this government is not open to any way out”. Maduro may have been willing to pursue judicial reform and even economic liberalisation in the hopes of facilitating a dialogue on sanctions, but anything he considers tantamount to foreign intervention is very clearly off the table.

Extradition row drives bilateral tensions

Nicolás Maduro has sought to leverage the renewal of diplomatic relations with Colombia, taking advantage of the considerable domestic pressure on President Iván Duque to secure the extradition of former legislator Aída Merlano, captured in the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, Zulia state, on 27 January. Merlano escaped from prison in October 2019, just one year into a 20-year sentence for electoral fraud, linked to a vote-buying scandal in Atlántico department.

Duque is under pressure to appear in control of Colombia’s security crisis, especially along its 2,219km border with Venezuela, but he is also a key ally of Juan Guaidó, and currently does not recognise the authority of Maduro’s government. On 29 January Maduro ridiculed Duque’s appeal for Guaidó to secure Merlano’s extradition, and offered to resume relations in order to resolve the issue, claiming that 30 more criminals wanted in Colombia are currently detained in Venezuela, awaiting extradition.

Duque condemned this as “diplomatic blackmail”, asking Interpol to intervene – but with the Colombian president facing growing criticism at home for his reluctance to negotiate with either protest leaders or the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) guerrillas, the pressure to secure a solution to this latest scandal may yet yield some geopolitically significant consequences.

EL SALVADOR | Bukele blasts budget. President Nayib Bukele cocked a snook at the opposition-controlled legislative assembly on 28 December by announcing that he would veto part of the 2021 budget it approved four days earlier on the grounds that it was “unconstitutional”. Bukele also said that he would spend the entire public works budget for the year in the next four months before seeking a budgetary amendment from the new legislature, which he hopes his party, Nuevas Ideas, will dominate after elections on 28 February.

Deputies approved a budget for US$7.45bn, up 16% on the 2020 version, on 24 December, but Bukele argued that 11 accompanying decrees to guarantee its financing, were “unconstitutional because deputies intended to plunder funds to benefit NGOs and mayors meant for public investment”.

The budget sailed through with the support of the main right-wing opposition Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Arena) and left-wing Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN); only 11 deputies opposed it, 10 of them from the right-of-centre Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional (Gana), with which Bukele came to power.

But Bukele hopes to have a decisive majority of his own in the 84-seat legislature from June through Nuevas Ideas, his personalist party led by his cousin, which failed in its attempt to register for the presidential elections but is now poised to make a stunning debut in next month’s legislative elections, according to electoral surveys. Bukele said he would wait for the new legislative body to take shape before seeking a budgetary reform to grant his government more funds for public investment. The electoral campaign formally began on 27 December.