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BRASIL | La inflación sube, el desempleo sube, cae el pronóstico de crecimiento. En junio la inflación en Brasil fue del 0,79%, de acuerdo con el Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (Ibge). La inflación acumulada para la primera mitad del 2015 fue del 6,17%, comparado con un 3,75% en el mismo periodo del 2014. En cuanto a junio del 2015, la inflación acumulada en los últimos 12 meses fue del 8,89%. El desempleo también se está elevando, llegando al 8,1% en el trimestre terminando  mayo, un significativo incremento frente al 7% informado para el mismo periodo en el 2014. El 9 de julio, el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) recortó su pronóstico para el crecimiento del PIB de Brasil para el 2015, del -1,0% al -1,5%.

ARGENTINA | Ratifying Mercosur’s FTA with Egypt. On 19 July, the Argentine government led by President Mauricio Macri signed the free trade agreement (FTA) between Egypt and Southern Common Market (Mercosur) regional trade bloc – that comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela (currently suspended) – and Egypt. The agreement had been signed in 2010 by all Mercosur member countries bar Argentina. The FTA eliminates tariffs on 60% of all goods traded with Egypt including food (cereals, olives, meat, fruits, vegetables), cars, machinery for hydrocarbons extraction and chemical products, among others. The deal also stipulates that 100% of all goods will be traded tariff free within ten years. The announcement followed a recent visit to Egypt by Argentina’s Vice-president Gabriela Michetti, who highlighted the importance of strengthening Argentina-Egypt trade and boosting economic cooperation. A statement issued by Argentina’s foreign ministry notes that Egypt is currently the seventh-main destination for Argentine exports, which totalled US$1.8bn in 2016.

ARGENTINA | Vaca Muerta investment. On 18 July Argentina’s state-owned oil firm Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF), Pan American Energy (PAE, a unit of British energy firm BP), Total Austral (a subsidiary of French multinational oil firm Total SA), and Wintershall Energía SA (a subsidiary of Germany’s active oil and gas producer Wintershall), announced a US$1.15bn joint investment to increase shale gas production in the Vaca Muerta deposit located in Argentina’s eastern province of Neuquén. The partners have already invested some US$500m in the Vaca Muerta venture since 2014.

• Argentina inflation

Argentina’s consumer price index (CPI) increased by 1.2% in June, compared with the previous month, bringing the accumulated inflation rate for the first six months of the year to 11.8%, according to the latest inflation figures released by the national statistics institute (Indec).

CHILE | Downgraded. On 13 July, international credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) downgraded Chile’s long-term foreign currency debt rating to ‘A+’ from ‘AA-’. According to an S&P statement circulated in the international media, the downgrade – the first for Chile since the 1990s – “reflects prolonged subdued economic growth that has hurt fiscal revenues, contributed to increases in the government’s debt burden, and eroded the country’s macroeconomic profile”. This stems in large part from the continued slump in international commodities prices – in particular copper, Chile’s main export. Chile’s finance minister, Rodrigo Valdés, himself has noted that while growth has averaged 1.4% in 2013-2016, the leftist Nueva Mayoría coalition government led by President Michelle Bachelet had faced “strong political pressure” to boost spending on social programmes which has resulted in an increase in the public debt. According to the S&P press release, the credit ratings agency expects “the Chilean economy to grow only 1.6% in 2017, unchanged from last year. We expect GDP growth to rise only modestly to 2% in 2018 and to 2.4% in 2019.” In response to the downgrade by S&P, which along with Fitch Ratings, another international credit ratings agency, has had Chile on ‘negative’ outlook for around six months, Valdés said that this was clearly “bad news” for Chile. However, the minister pointed out that Chile still has the highest credit rating among all Latin American countries, sharing the same rating with a number of high-income countries such as Japan, Israel, Slovakia, Ireland, and Slovenia. Valdés also added that the government would continue with its fiscal strategy, applied since 2015, which implies reducing the structural fiscal deficit by approximately one-quarter of a percentage point of GDP each year.

PARAGUAY | Trade surplus. Paraguay posted a trade surplus of US$504.7m in the first half of this year, 59.1% less than in the same period last year, according to recent figures released by the country’s central bank (BCP). Exports reached US$5.8bn in the first six months of 2017, up by 2.5% year-on-year. But these were outstripped by imports, which increased by 19.7% over the same period to US$5.3bn. The BCP is forecasting domestic economic growth of 4% this year and in 2018. Meanwhile the BCP’s inflation measures show that this reached 0.3% in July, the same rate registered in the same month of 2016. The July inflation figures have led the BCP to project that year-end inflation will reach 4% this year.

On 15 April Guatemala held a referendum in which voters were asked whether they wanted the International Court of Justice (ICJ), based at The Hague, to settle Guatemala’s claim over half of Belize’s territory. After the ‘yes’ vote won in Guatemala with 95.88% of the vote, Belize announced it will hold its own referendum in a year’s time. If another ‘yes’ vote is secured, the border dispute will be taken to The Hague. While an ICJ resolution will be a lengthy and costly procedure, it could be the only way to ease tensions between the two neighbours, especially in the unmarked border area known as the ‘adjacency zone’, where the incursion of Guatemalan peasants into Belizean territory regularly leads to clashes with the Belizean border patrol.

In the referendum held on 15 April, a total of 1.78m Guatemalans (24% of the 7.52m registered to vote) marked ‘yes’ on the ballot when asked: “Do you agree that any legal reclaim taken by Guatemala against Belize over continental and island territories and any maritime areas corresponding to said territories be submitted to the International Court of Justice for definitive resolution and that it also determine the borders of the respective territories and the area of each part?”

Five days after the referendum, Guatemala presented the official result to the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS), which has acted as a mediator in a dispute that has claimed the lives of ten Guatemalan peasants in the adjacency zone between the two countries since 1999. On 30 April, the Belizean government led by Prime Minister Dean Barrow set a date for its own referendum: 10 April 2019. Now Belize will have to carry out its own referendum and if another ‘yes’ vote is secured, the dispute will be taken to the ICJ, a United Nations (UN) tribunal created to resolve territorial or boundary disputes between countries whose rulings are irrevocable and unappealable.

Although voter turnout for the Guatemalan referendum was low – seven out of ten Guatemalans who are enrolled to vote did not do so – it was slightly higher than the turnout for the two previous referenda that Guatemala has held, where voter turnout didn’t exceed 20%. Mario Fuentes Destarac, former president of the Centre for the Defence of the Constitution (Cedecon), a Guatemalan association of legal experts that focuses on constitutional issues, argued that “the referendum should have been carried out during an election. An isolated referendum was likely to lead a low voter turnout because (the border dispute) is an abstract issue that’s difficult to explain in a civic campaign”.

A long-standing dispute

Whereas polling stations in most parts of the country remained empty, long queues of voters could be seen in polling stations in the area known as the adjacency zone (an area extending one kilometre on either side of the 1859 treaty line). The 42 peasant villages located on the Guatemalan side of the adjacency zone, mostly from the Qeqchí Mayan ethnic group, have borne the brunt of a border dispute that has left ten peasants dead and hope an ICJ resolution will bring them land rights as well as an improvement in their living conditions.

The long-standing dispute between the two countries dates back to the late 18^th century when the territory that today comprises Guatemala and Belize belonged to the Spanish crown. Guatemala argues that between 1783 and 1786, Spain allowed British settlers to engage in timber logging in a small portion of Belizean territory but the British crown used this as a means to gradually encroach on Spanish territory and by the time Guatemala declared its independence in 1821, British settlers had invaded the whole of Belize.

During the 19^th century, Guatemala would repeatedly accuse Britain of breaking the terms of the agreements between the two countries. Under the terms of the Wyke-Aycinena Treaty of 1859, signed by Guatemala and Britain, Guatemala agreed to recognise British Honduras and Britain promised to build a road from Guatemala to the town of Punta Gorda. However, in 1940, Guatemala claimed the treaty was void because the British government had failed to build the promised road and after declaring its independence in 1981, Belize claimed it was not bound by the treaty because it had not signed it.

Guatemala recognised Belize’s independence in 1991 but didn’t accept the borders and continued to stake a claim over 11,000 kilometres of Belizean territory, including several islands (approximately half of Belize’s current territory).

In November 2000, Guatemala and Belize signed the first Agreement of Confidence Building Measures which established the adjacency zone between the two countries but tensions between the two countries continue to flare up every time a Guatemalan peasant is killed by Belizean border patrol agents after straying into Belizean territory.

The most recent confrontation occurred in April 2016, when 13-year-old Julio René Alvarado, the son of a Guatemalan peasant, was gunned down by wardens of the Chiquibul Nature Reserve, on the Belizean side of the adjacency zone. Alvarado’s death led to a series of angry exchanges between the two countries and tensions peaked when Guatemala sent 3,000 troops to the border.

Edgar Gutiérrez, who served as Guatemala’s foreign minister under the Alfonso Portillo administration (2000-2004), says an ICJ resolution is the only way to protect vulnerable peasant communities. “We hope that clearly defining the border will ease tensions on the Belizean side of the border so that peasants are no longer seen as enemies or invaders and shot before questions are asked. An effective resolution to the dispute would have to include cooperation programmes that allow those living in the adjacency zone to live and mobilise within the area in peace,” says Gutiérrez.

The long and costly road to peace

After several failed attempts to reach a consensus, in 2008 Guatemala and Belize signed a special agreement to take the territorial dispute to the ICJ. But while the agreement was being negotiated, Belize modified its Referendum Law, increasing the minimum voter turnout needed for a referendum to be valid to 60% of enrolled voters, which would be hardly feasible given that no election in Belize has ever had such a high turnout.

Guatemala accused Belize of acting in bad faith and suspended its referendum, slated for October 2013, until Belize repealed the amendment to the Referendum Law and a new date was set for the referendum: 15 April 2018.

The Belizean government says it has already launched a public awareness campaign under the slogan “ICJ, be informed”, in order to secure a ‘yes’ vote on 10 April 2019. If another ‘yes’ vote is secured and the dispute is taken to The Hague, Guatemala and Belize will each face legal costs totalling approximately US$11m, a heavy cost for two countries hampered by serious development issues (59% of Guatemalans live below the poverty line). Nevertheless, Fuentes Destarac is adamant that an ICJ resolution is the only way forward. “The dispute is a permanent source of uncertainty for the two states and has led to serious border issues. Once the dispute has been resolved it will be possible to establish a normal trade relationship between the two countries,” he says.

Social media is big in Brazil. There are plenty of well-known online platforms and highly sophisticated consumers, making it easy for international companies to conclude that they are dealing with a familiar and well known e-commerce landscape, comparable to that of the United States and Europe. But familiar is not identical: there are important variants and unique local features that could make the key difference between commercial success and failure.

All the data highlights the importance of Brazilian social media. With a population of over 210m, the country has 139m internet users (66% of the population) and 13m active social media users (a 62% penetration rate – well above the global average of 42%; not that far behind the North American penetration rate of 70% and the UK penetration rate of 66%). The number of active social media users in Brazil jumped 7% in the year to January 2018 (mobile social media users rose by 9%). On average those Brazilian who are connected spend an impressive 3 hours 39 minutes using social media every day, making it a prime route for companies to reach out to their existing and potential customers.

Yet social media platforms have followed a slightly different pattern of growth to that seen in other parts of the world. Brazil’s first steps into the social media world were marked by the launch and growth of Orkut, a network created by Google, in the years after 2004. Orkut was big in Brazil and in India. But by today’s standards it was rather slow and clunky and when the time came, was unable to fend off the competitive challenge of the user-friendlier Facebook. With a cleaner design, and faster process for sharing pictures and videos, Facebook became a key gateway for Brazilians accessing the internet.

Writing for website The Brazil Report, João Citounadin points out that today Brazil’s social media market shares differ from those prevalent globally and regionally. Despite its importance, Facebook’s market share is under 50%, compared with over 60% on average, both globally and in South America. Citounadin points out that Twitter has a lower rate of adoption in the country while Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest are more intensely used. YouTube in particular has an above-average share. He suggests that this is because of a cultural factor: Brazilians love videos and images. In fact, according to one survey, which appears to contradict the market share data, Brazilians actually claim to be more active on YouTube than on Facebook.

Brazilian companies are now spending around BRL14.8bn (US$3.6bn) a year on the digital industry with about one-third of that going to banner advertising and social media. They began by simply transferring radio and TV content to the web; but are now moving to a much more ‘digital first’ approach. This year Gol airlines showed what can be done. To mark its 17^th anniversary it launched a Facebook campaign which improved its ad recall rate by 10 percentage points and brought 234,000 unique visitors to its promotional website in one day. Home appliances company Casas Bahía also got good results form an integrated TV and social media advertising campaign.

Another peculiarity of the Brazilian e-commerce market is that Amazon does not reign supreme – at least not yet. The US-based company entered the Brazilian market in a very low-key way in 2012, initially focusing on e-readers, books, and streaming movies. The online sales market, including physical goods, is still dominated by Argentina-based Mercado Libre, and by Brazilian competitors Magazine Luiza and BTW Cia Digital. Mercado Libre’s Brazil revenues grew by a reported 80% last year; the company also opened a new warehouse near São Paulo to ship third-party goods. BTW is owned by the bricks-and-mortar retail chain Lojas Americanas, and has received a big capital injection from investment fund 3G Capital. It has an annual membership-fee based shopping club branded ‘Prime’, the name already used by Amazon in other markets; in Brazil, Amazon is able to use ‘Prime’ only for its streaming video offer. Magazine Luiza is also building an e-commerce operation on top of a bricks-and-mortar network of 800 shops.

An executive at Magazine Luiza told Reuters news agency earlier this year that its strategy is to use its existing physical stores as “free distribution centres”. The challenge for e-commerce in Brazil is very poor transport infrastructure, meaning that companies have to spend 15% of their revenues on fulfilment, compared with 8% in the United States. Another difference with the US: bureaucracy and taxes. Unlike the US, where Amazon was initially exempt from online sales taxes, in Brazil e-commerce companies have started up facing more red tape and the obligation to pay significant sales taxes.

What then are the special factors that companies operating in Brazil need to bear in mind when using social media? One is that in an election year there has been growing concern over manipulation and ‘fake news’. This is relevant to online commerce because growing mistrust of social media in general may seep though and increase consumer worries over online shopping. While in the US the growth in online shopping has had a negative effect on shopping mall sales, some argue that in Brazil the malls will hold out better, simply because consumers see them as a safe and welcoming place where they can pay for items securely. A second and obvious point – also highlighted in the election campaign – is that some voters and consumers are not on social media (in fact, four out ten Brazilians do not use social media). Social media use tends to be lower among the poor and in certain regions such as the northeast of the country. The election campaign is a reminder that for certain segments of the electorate, traditional or ‘old’ media – radio and television – may be the most effective marketing channels.

Brazil’s public security authorities were able to claim a victory in April with the capture of one of the criminals on the justice & public security ministry (MJSP)’s 2020 ‘most wanted’ list. On the run for two decades, Gilberto Aparecido dos Santos, known as ‘Fuminho’, was understood to be closely linked to the leadership of the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), Brazil’s largest drug trafficking organisation (DTO).

Dos Santos was arrested on 13 April in a luxury hotel in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, in a joint operation involving Brazil’s federal police (PF), the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Ministry of Justice, and the Mozambican police. He was extradited to Brazil on 19 April. Dos Santos had been on the run since he escaped from prison in Brazil in 1999, fleeing the country to settle in Bolivia, although he is also believed to have spent time in Paraguay. He is understood to be one of the PCC’s top providers of cocaine. The MJSP notes that Dos Santos is wanted for drug trafficking, crimes against property, and financing the escape of criminal leaders.

• Fuminho and Marcola

Dos Santos is believed to be a personal friend of suspected PCC leader Marco Willians Herbas Camacho ‘Marcola’ (who is behind bars in Brasília), and to have helped finance and organise the multiple attempts to break Camacho out of prison. Dos Santos is also suspected of having ordered the 2018 execution of two PCC leaders, Rogério Jeremias de Simone ‘Gegê do Mangue’ and Fabiano Alves de Souza ‘Paca’, a settling of accounts within the DTO.

At the time of his capture, Dos Santos was believed to be working with local organisations in several African countries to set up drug trafficking and money laundering schemes on behalf of the PCC – a sign of the transnational DTO’s growing international reach. Nevertheless, Dos Santos’ arrest is not expected to upset the PCC’s activities. Of more pressing concern to the DTO is the impact of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic on its business – the price of cocaine has soared in Brazil as the supply chain from producing countries has been disrupted by the pandemic.

Ahead of his final year in office, President Martín Vizcarra’s annual address to the nation on Peru’s independence day (28 July) was much-anticipated. Vizcarra did not shy away from acknowledging the scale of the challenges facing Peru: the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, the associated economic emergency, and the political deadlock between his executive and congress that has compounded these crises. Solutions to these problems, however, were less forthcoming, with ambitious rhetoric on political dialogue and co-ordination taking precedence over more tangible proposals.

The address was not entirely free of policy offerings – Vizcarra unveiled plans to repeat the emergency subsidy programme that won considerable acclaim in the early days of the pandemic, providing 8.5m vulnerable households with another PEN760 (US$216) to help protect them from the economic impacts of the pandemic, and to boost Peru’s economic recovery. He also announced a PEN2bn (US$569m) boost to the public health budget in 2021, up to a total of PEN20bn. Long-term underinvestment in the healthcare sector has been widely identified as a significant factor behind Peru’s particular struggles in the face of the pandemic.

The headline announcement, however, was ‘Pacto Peru’, a framework for political and social dialogue centred on five key axes: improving health provision; tackling educational inequalities; supporting sustainable, market-based economic growth; delivering political and judicial reform to tackle corruption; and fighting poverty. Few would dispute the need for improvement in these areas, but critics noted that similar forums for dialogue have been tried and failed in the past, and highlighted a notable lack of self-criticism in Vizcarra’s comments, failing to face his own government’s contribution to the country’s problems.

Vizcarra has repeatedly made it clear that he has no desire to run for re-election in 2021, and his portrayal of Pacto Peru gave the impression he is already preparing for his departure. He emphasised the need to create a space for political dialogue “regardless of who is elected as the next president”, in order to “generate the minimum agreements needed to strengthen democracy”. Vizcarra’s government has struggled to build a productive relationship with the legislature, as he dissolved one congress in 2019, and was forced into a major cabinet reshuffle in July after a similar deadlock emerged just months after the election of a new batch of deputies.

• Political stalemate

The appointment of Pedro Cateriano as prime minister during President Vizcarra’s cabinet reshuffle in July [WR-20-28] was clearly intended to send a message to congress – it is hoped that Cateriano will be able to build bridges, as evidenced through his multiple meetings with party representatives in recent weeks, but he is also an experienced figure who will not shy away from a showdown with legislators. On 3 August Cateriano will offer further details to congress on Vizcarra’s plans for his final year in office, before presenting the new cabinet for a crucial vote of confidence.

Again discussing next year’s election, Vizcarra insisted he had no plans to interfere “in a campaign that must be clean, with clear and transparent rules”. However, his comments welcoming the dismissal of senior prosecutor Pedro Chávarry over allegations of corruption led some opponents to suggest that the government is indeed seeking to shape the electoral contest. Chávarry stands accused of attempting to derail corruption investigations into twice presidential runner-up Keiko Fujimori and her right-wing Fuerza Popular (FP) party, during his time as attorney general.

Chávarry claimed that this suspension had been “managed from the [presidential] palace”. Similarly, after special prosecutor José Domingo Pérez requested last week that FP be excluded from political activities for two and a half years, FP deputy Martha Chávez accused Pérez “and those who are behind him” of playing politics. Pérez is part of the ‘Lava Jato’ probe, investigating corruption linked to Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht. Fujimori is still awaiting trial following her arrest in 2018 on charges of money laundering and illegal campaign financing; she described attempts to exclude FP (and therefore eliminate her chances of a third presidential bid) as “an unprecedented and undemocratic act”.

This is not the only electoral exclusion scandal to have hit Peru in the past week: the president of the congressional constitutional commission, Omar Chehade, made waves after proposing that candidacy be limited to those who are already registered as members of a party, ostensibly to bring greater stability to Peru’s political system. It was condemned by rival parties of Chehade’s Alianza para el Progreso (APP), however, as an attempt to hand established politicians an advantage over other potential candidates.

Daniel Urresti, a deputy for Podemos Perú (PP), emphasised that the three frontrunners in recent presidential polls would all be excluded on this basis: Urresti is one of these frontrunners, along with George Forsyth (a former football player for Peru’s national team, now mayor of Lima’s La Victoria district) and Vizcarra’s former prime minister (2019) Salvador del Solar. Chehade subsequently backed down on his proposals, but insisted that requiring party membership would strengthen Peruvian politics, and proposed a 30 September deadline instead.

On the penultimate day of 2020, Argentina became the largest Latin American country to legalise abortion. A bill tabled by President Alberto Fernández had been approved by the chamber of deputies on 11 December; on 30 December, the bill permitting elective abortions up to 14 weeks into the pregnancy passed the senate in a landmark vote. Pro-choice demonstrators who had been keeping vigil outside congress erupted in celebration of this historic advancement of women’s rights in the country, at a time when the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has further eroded the fight for gender equality.

Latin America has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world. Cuba, Guyana, and Uruguay are the only countries in the region which allow terminations on request. In most countries, such as Brazil, and Argentina under its previous law (which dates from 1921), abortions are illegal except in specific cases such as rape, danger to the mother’s life, or fetus malformation. In some countries, such as Nicaragua and Honduras, abortions are completely prohibited.

In the predominantly Catholic region, public opinion on abortion remains conservative. An August 2020 poll by Ipsos found that 36% of Chileans, 35% of Argentines, and just 16% of Brazilians are in favour of abortions being fully permitted (compared with over 60% in most European countries), although a further 30% or so of respondents are in favour of abortions being permitted in certain circumstances, such as rape.

Despite the direction of public opinion, the pro-choice movement in Argentina has been particularly active, campaigning hand-in-hand with the country’s grassroots women’s rights movement. Their efforts led to the approval of a bill by the chamber of deputies in June 2018 permitting elective terminations, but the initiative failed to pass the senate. President Fernández, who took office in December 2019, had promised to table such a bill again. He did so in November 2020 – the ninth attempt to change Argentina’s abortion laws, but the first to come directly from the executive. 

Pro-life campaigners added to their arguments that the context of the Covid-19 pandemic made the timing of such a bill incongruous. But pro-choice activists, who had continued to campaign despite the pandemic restrictions, argued that on the contrary, the sanitary emergency made the issue of legalising terminations all the more urgent, as warnings have multiplied over the threat that the pandemic represents to progress on gender equality.

• Covid-19 and women’s rights

Concern over the regression in the fight for women’s rights has been voiced in many quarters this year, as the coronavirus pandemic and its socio-economic impacts have deepened gender inequalities, undermined access to sexual and reproductive rights, and exposed an epidemic of domestic violence. In April 2020, United Nations (UN) Secretary General António Guterres had called for women and girls to be put at the centre of Covid-19 recovery plans, so as to not undo years of progress in the area of women’s rights; but less than six months later, world leaders at the UN General Assembly were expressing their concerns that women’s rights are being reversed across the world.

NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a comprehensive report in August 2020 calling for Argentina to move to legalise abortion, and outlining how the coronavirus pandemic and accompanying lockdowns – which in Argentina was one of the longest and strictest in Latin America – had increased barriers to abortion, and the associated risks.

Health and human cost

Figures are hard to come by, but it is estimated that between 370,000 and 520,000 abortions are performed every year in Argentina (which has a population of 45m). The criminalisation of the practice means that abortions are expensive, and that complications are more likely to be dangerous, with the Guttmacher Institute, a US-based reproductive rights research organisation, estimating that 40% of women who have a clandestine abortion experience complications which require treatment.

It is estimated that around 3,000 women have died as a result of clandestine abortions in Argentina since the country’s return to democracy in 1983. According to HRW, almost 40,000 women and girls were admitted to a public hospital in Argentina in 2016 for issues arising from abortion or miscarriage – 16% of these were children and teenagers aged 10 to 19. But these figures paint just part of the picture, as many women will not seek medical aid out of fear of stigmatisation, of being refused help, or of being denounced to the authorities.

Change at last

The approval of the bill on the voluntary termination of pregnancy lays the foundation for this to change. Once promulgated, the law will make elective abortion freely available up until the 14^th week of pregnancy; abortion remains possible beyond that in cases of rape or danger to the mother’s life. Terminations will be accessible through the public or private healthcare systems, and must be performed within 10 days of being requested. Public officials and healthcare providers are bound to guarantee dignified treatment, and will face sanctions if they are found to have obstructed or refused to perform a legally-authorised abortion.

There are high hopes that this change to the law in Argentina will help drive a societal shift across the region as a whole, where attitudes to abortion and its human cost are concerned. “Argentina has made an emblematic step forward in defending the rights of women, girls, and people with reproductive capacity,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, the Americas director at NGO Amnesty International (AI), said on the day of the senate vote. She continued: “it has also sent a strong message of hope to our entire continent: that we can change course against the criminalisation of abortion and against clandestine abortions, which pose serious risks to the health and lives of millions of people.”

Nuevas Ideas (NI), the party of President Nayib Bukele, will have an unprecedented two-thirds majority in the 84-member national assembly following the 28 February legislative elections, but Bukele’s economic plans could be constrained by the country’s precarious economic situation.

The final results of the election show that when the new legislature takes up its seats in May, President Bukele will enjoy the support of 61 deputies from NI and its centre-right ally, Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional (Gana). This gives Bukele the two-thirds majority needed to approve the national budget, international loans, and appointments to key state institutions. Bukele will now be able to focus on implementing his 2019 electoral manifesto, ‘Plan Cuscatlán’. This includes the security plan ‘Control Territorial’, which he has started implementing and which has proven popular with voters, as well as universal healthcare, an ambitious infrastructure development plan.

Pensions are also a hot topic. There will be a rise in the monthly minimum pension payment from US$207 to US$304 this year, which will add US$88m to the cost of the system, on estimates from the Salvadorean association of pension fund administrators (Asafondos). This will be paid for by a redirected loan, rather than through pension contributions. A local economist, Luis Membreño, told national daily, La Prensa Gráfica, that the decision was political and did not consider the effect on the sustainability of the current pension system, which has only been in place since 2017.

Trade unionists complain that the pension system, which is currently manged by private pension fund administrators (AFPs), has yet to translate into benefits for workers and they are calling for the system to be brought back under state management. Both Bukele and Economy Minister Alejandro Zelaya have promised “integral” pension reform this year, which Zelaya said would benefit pensioners, the state, and AFPs, without giving any further details. However, NI deputy-elect, Suecy Callejas, said the aim is to move to a mixed pension system with greater state involvement, but that studies need to be undertaken in order to come up with a “more responsible” system.

Aside from these items on Bukele’s legislative agenda, his government also continues to support vulnerable Salvadoreans affected by the impact of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic through its emergency health programme (PES). On 5 April the Bukele administration announced that food and medicine distribution, which started in May 2020, would continue, with 70,000 packages containing basic items handed out daily.

There is a lot of demand for the programme, with an estimated 478,000 Salvadoreans set to fall into poverty as a result of the pandemic, according to a 24 March report from the Inter-American Development Bank. This translates to an increase in the country’s poverty rate from 28.5% to 35.9%. While there is undoubtedly a need for government support, the PES represents another drain on public finances, which are already in a perilous condition.

A precarious situation

In a report released on 7 January, international credit ratings agency Fitch Ratings raised concerns over El Salvador’s finances, projecting that the country’s fiscal deficit would reach 8.2% of GDP this year. In a previous 2 March report, Fitch forecast that the debt-to-GDP ratio would rise to 94.8% this year, up from nearly 89.4% in 2020 and 70% in 2019. The Central American institute for fiscal studies (Icefi), a Guatemala-based think tank, has also raised concerns over El Salvador’s public debt. In a 11 March report, Icefi warned that the situation has been “particularly concerning” for various years, and debt could reach 100% of GDP in the next few years unless there is “some change in public finances in the short term”.

Both Fitch and Icefi highlighted the hitherto gridlock in the outgoing legislative assembly, which has been dominated by the opposition right-wing Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Arena) and left-wing Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN), as a reason for financial difficulties. In its March report, Fitch said this limited the government’s ability to tap external funding from either private or official sector creditors, which requires approval by a two-thirds majority in the assembly, resulting in an over-reliance on domestic market borrowing to meet high government funding needs, pushing borrowing costs higher. Icefi said the recent election result could consequently facilitate the approval of external borrowing and of a fiscal adjustment.

In an interview with newswire Reuters, published on 4 March, Zelaya said that financing from international multilateral lenders would make El Salvador’s debt and public spending sustainable. He suggested that one option could be signing a new agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), telling Reuters that the government is looking to secure some US$1.3bn in financing through a 36-month Extended Fund Facility, similar to that announced for Costa Rica [EB-21-02]. Zelaya also told Reuters that for 2021 “we need financing of around US$2bn, including the short-term debt management plan” (see sidebar).  

However, Fitch also signals caution, pointing out that Bukele “has yet to set out a medium-term fiscal strategy and his administration’s plans for a supplementary 2020 budget would have reduced consolidation commitments even before the pandemic”. It adds that securing external funding via an IMF programme would be contingent on commitments to fiscal adjustments, estimated at 3% of GDP before the pandemic.

With the latest forecast from the World Bank predicting that El Salvador’s GDP will grow 4.1% this year, following a 8.6% contraction in 2020, a local think-tank, Fundación Salvadoreña para el Desarrollo Económico y Social (Fusades), has suggested that one factor that could help to drive growth is the huge US$1.9trn stimulus package approved by the new US administration led by President Joe Biden. Fusades estimates that this could boost El Salvador’s GDP by 0.9%-1.7% by increasing US demand for Salvadorean exports. This underlines the extent to which the health of smaller economies such as El Salvador will rely on a strong global recovery from the pandemic.

Another potential solution for Bukele’s government could be condonation of debt, as proposed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in a report released on 1 April. Published ahead of the April 2021 WB-IMF Spring Meetings, the UNDP report entitled ‘Sovereign Debt Vulnerabilities in Developing Economies’ calls for “bold new mechanisms” to help 72 vulnerable countries - which include Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua - address debt distress. Although not included in the UNDP list, the Bukele government could make a case to be extended this benefit given that its situation is considered similar to that of its neighbours.

While external factors could prove important in deciding El Salvador’s future, Bukele’s newly strengthened hand in the legislature leaves him much better placed to steer the economy in the direction of his choosing to try to find a solution to the debt problem.

• External financing

While no agreement has yet been reached with the IMF, Zelaya told Reuters that the multilateral organisation could potentially disburse up to US$450m this year, on top of prior commitments of US$250m from the Inter-American Development Bank; US$200m from the World Bank; and US$600m from the Central American bank for economic integration (BCIE).

COSTA RICA | Joining the Pacific Alliance. Costa Rica’s President Rodrigo Chaves has formally ordered his foreign affairs and foreign trade ministers, Arnoldo André and Manuel Tovar respectively, to launch talks for the country to join the Pacific Alliance trade bloc, comprising Chile, Mexico, Colombia, and Peru, as part of his drive for faster economic growth.

Costa Rica has been an observer of the Pacific Alliance since 2012 but the process of joining the trade bloc, of which it sought full membership in 2014, has stalled over the past decade under successive governments.

EL SALVADOR | Economic challenges. Annualised inflation reached 7.76% in June, according to El Salvador’s central bank (BCR), the highest rate since 2010. Accumulated inflation in the first half of 2022 stands at 4.55%. As with elsewhere in the region, inflation was driven by sharp increases in food prices, the majority of which the country has to import.

The World Bank recently cut its economic growth forecast for El Salvador for 2022 from 2.9% to 2.7%, the lowest of any country in Central America (the BCR cut its growth forecast from 3.2% to 2.6%). The economy is heavily dependent on remittances, which are increasing for now. Remittances totalled US$3.78bn in the first half of 2022, according to the BCR, up 3.5% on the same period in 2021, but they could be affected by a recession in the US.

Remittances no longer cover the trade deficit as they used to in the recent past in El Salvador. Not even close. Although exports increased by 16.8% in the first half of 2022 year-on-year to US$3.26bn, imports soared over the same period, increasing by 27.2% to as much as US$8.93bn, leaving a trade deficit of some US$5.67bn.

Default

El Salvador’s slowing GDP growth, increasing inflation, falling tax take, and remittances increasing at a slower rhythm, coupled with political uncertainty surrounding the authoritarian government led by President Nayib Bukele, are all conspiring to raise the risk of debt default in the near future. On 7 July Bloomberg News placed El Salvador at the top of a list of emerging markets heading for imminent default. Country risk indicators, meanwhile, rose to levels never seen before last week. “Markets,” the national daily La Prensa Gráfica said on 15 July, in allusion to the country’s hammering in the JP Morgan Emerging Markets Bond Index (EMBI), “do not trust that the country can meet its future financial obligations”. El Salvador faces a US$800m bond repayment in early 2023.

Ecuador’s Energy & Mining Minister Inés Manzano has pushed back against criticism of a deal which saw operating rights at one of the country’s most productive oilfields granted to a private consortium. The national assembly released a statement on 1 March alleging that President Daniel Noboa’s administration had rushed the deal through during the Carnival public holiday in order to limit scrutiny of the contract.

The Sacha oilfield in the Amazonian province of Orellana is the most productive in Ecuador, but the government says that half a century of management by state oil company Petroecuador has left the site in a state of dangerous disrepair. “It’s said that Sacha is the jewel in the crown, but I’m sorry to say that it’s a rusty crown and that the jewels need a polish,” Manzano said on 3 March, highlighting Sacha’s corroded infrastructure and inadequate fire-prevention standards, which she said threaten to cause an “environmental catastrophe”.

Operating rights at the oilfield have been awarded to Sinopetrol, a consortium of Petrolia Ecuador and Amodaimi Oil Company, subsidiaries of Canada’s New Stratus Energy and China’s Sinopec respectively. The Noboa administration insists that this does not amount to a sale or privatisation, but that it is an essential step to boost investment. However, a statement released by the national assembly on 1 March, in response to press reports that a deal had been reached with Sinopetrol, alleged that the government “took advantage of the Carnival public holiday to hand over the Sacha oilfield to a private company, contravening the hydrocarbons law”.

Manzano had unveiled a plan on 22 January to boost foreign investment in the oil sector significantly over the next five years if President Noboa wins re-election in the 13 April run-off against Luisa González, of the left-wing opposition Revolución Ciudadana (RC). The Noboa administration is aiming to attract US$42bn in oil investments by the end of 2029, which it says will significantly raise oil production from its 2024 levels of around 475,000 barrels per day (bpd). Noboa’s predecessor, Guillermo Lasso (2021-2023), made negligible progress on his own ambitious goal of doubling oil production to 1m bpd during his presidency.

Conaie leader threatens protests

Leonidas Iza, the president of the umbrella indigenous organisation Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador (Conaie), said on 2 March that the indigenous movement will take “all necessary action” to block the Sacha deal. “The Ecuadorean people will not allow President Noboa’s outgoing government to directly hand over Sacha to a private company on the spur of the moment, taking advantage of a public holiday, in the middle of an election campaign in which it is unclear who the winner will be,” Iza said. Conaie has previously succeeded in forcing major U-turns from successive presidents, most recently Guillermo Lasso (2021-2023) and Lenín Moreno (2017-2021).

MEXICO | Boosting ties with Japan. Mexico’s Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco met his Japanese counterpart, Toshimitsu Motegi, in Mexico City (CDMX) on 3 August. The meeting took place under the framework of the Mexico-Japan strategic global partnership, which was created in 2010. During the meeting, the two sides announced the launch of a bilateral high-level economic dialogue to boost cooperation in sectors such as artificial intelligence, the digital economy, and supply chain resilience.

The dialogue is designed to increase bilateral trade, which reached US$9.9bn between January and May 2026 alone, a 4% increase over the same period the previous year, according to Mexico’s foreign ministry (SRE).

The pair also agreed to launch a joint programme to address the problem of sargassum, a type of seaweed, in the Caribbean Sea. This comes as President Claudia Sheinbaum unveiled a M$2bn (US$115m) programme on 30 July to tackle sargassum, which is piling up on beaches in large quantities, harming tourism on Mexico’s Caribbean coast.

Poner los derechos humanos en el centro de su política exterior, irónicamente, le ha causado a la Presidenta Dilma Rousseff nada más que problemas. Esta semana, Rousseff recibió las aparentes quejas de Irán que ella ha hecho demasiado, y de Human Rights  Watch y los disidentes cubanos que no ha hecho lo suficiente.

El canciller de Brasil, Antonio Patriota, insiste hasta el cansancio que ha habido una amplia continuidad en la política exterior de Lula da Silva (2003-2010) a Rousseff. Esto es un poco engañoso. El hecho de que Patriota fue traído de vuelta de la embajada en Washington DC en primer lugar señala un cambio de enfoque. El cambio es sutil, pero de todas formas perceptible. Sin embargo, el problema principal es que aún hay inconsistencia rodeando la política exterior de Brasil, que socava sus ambiciones de obtener un puesto en la los altos foros internacionales, como el Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas (UNSC). Parte del ‘problema’ es que Brasil tiene una política exterior de no intervencionista escrita en su constitución. Y, aunque bien puede ser que Brasil está siendo medido por estándares más altos que algunos de los mismos miembros permanentes del UNSC, Rousseff al menos parece haber captado que Brasil necesita comprometerse en alguna realpolitik para de ser tomado en cuenta seriamente por las potencias existentes.

Aparentemente esta nueva actitud ha sido notada en Teherán. Ali Akbar Javanfekr, el vocero personal del Presidente de Irán, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, se quejo ante el diario Folha de São Paulo esta semana que Rousseff ha “desbaratado todo lo que Lula había logrado. Ella destruyó años de buenas relaciones”.

Itamaraty (la cancillería brasilera) claramente fue tomada por sorpresa. Enfrentado a una oleada de requerimientos por una respuesta, Patriota evitó un comentario directo sobre la declaración iraní, afirmando: “He tenido contactos normales con los iraníes. En la Asamblea General de la ONU el canciller iraní pidió verme. Me telefoneó el 7 de setiembre para expresarme sus buenos deseos. En la reunión ministerial de la OMC [la Organización Mundial del Comercio] me reuní con funcionarios iraníes e identificamos un interés en tener buenas relaciones políticas y comerciales”. Patriota agregó que el Presidente Ahmadinejad había sido invitado para la conferencia Río+20 sobre el medioambiente y el desarrollo sustentable en junio (Patriota admitió que aún no sabía si el iraní asistiría). El que Ahmadinejad no haya incluido al Brasil en su reciente gira latinoamericana no pasó desapercibida, en especial en EU.

De igual manera, Patriota se rehusó a comentar sobre informes que productos brasileños como productos avícolas y carne están siendo frenados en las fronteras de Irán. De acuerdo con Folha, la União Brasileira de Avicultura dice que las exportaciones de pollo han sido objeto de “injustificadas inspecciones” desde octubre del 2011, mientras que la multinacional de alimentos brasilera JBS también reclama que miles de toneladas de carne han sido retenidas en un puerto iraní por tres semanas.

La administración Rousseff afirma que su forma de tratar con Irán no ha cambiado. Aunque en marzo del 2010, Brasil notablemente apoyó por primera vez, un voto en el Consejo de Derechos Humanos de la ONU para enviar un relator sobre derechos humanos a Irán. En diciembre del 2010 (la entonces presidenta electa) Rousseff también había condenado (en una entrevista con el Washington Post) la lapidación de una mujer iraní. Sin embargo, la semana pasada, Patriota reiteró públicamente al visitante Canciller del Reino Unido, William Hague, las dudas de Brasil acerca de la efectividad de las sanciones a países como Irán.

Libia y Siria

En marzo del 2011, Brasil votó en contra de la resolución de la ONU de imponer una zona de exclusión aérea sobre Libia, citando preocupaciones acerca de la seguridad ciudadana. Más tarde, Itamaraty esperó varios meses antes de reconocer al Consejo Nacional de Transición Libio. También urgió a la ONU y la Unión Europea a que permanezcan comprometidas con Siria, alegando que la resolución de la ONU sobre Libia fue utilizada para justificar meses de excesiva fuerza militar y que no debía ser repetida. En octubre del 2011, se abstuvo (junto con India, Líbano y Sudáfrica) en la votación sobre de una resolución de la ONU legalmente vinculante, amenazando con sanciones al gobierno sirio. Rusia y China usaron sus vetos contra la resolución. Al mismo tiempo, un  reconocido diplomático brasileño, Sergio Pinheiro, es el presidente de la Comisión de Investigación de la ONU sobre violaciones los derechos humanos en Siria.

Esta semana, la ONG basada en EU, Human Rights Watch (HRW), acusó a Brasil de conducir ideológicamente su política exterior, en vez de que está se base sobre el respeto universal por los derechos humanos. José Miguel Vivanco, el director para las Américas de HRW, acusó a Brasil de sentarse en el cerco durante la Primavera Árabe, mientras que Philippe Bolopion, el director de las Naciones Unidas en HRW, dijo al diario O Estado que “Brasil no debería actuar de la misma manera que Occidente. En verdad, Brasil debería ser consistente en sus posiciones en defensa de los derechos humanos”. Señaló que Brasil “tiene peso internacional como una democracia. Al abstenerse de condenar a un dictador, el gobierno brasilero termina legitimando un régimen represivo”. Aunque al mismo tiempo, Vivanco reconoció que las cosas habían “mejorado notablemente” bajo la Presidenta Rousseff (presumiblemente con referencia a Irán).

Los académicos brasileros han tomado una visión más matizada, señalando que Brasil no solamente actúa en línea con su posición no-intervencionista, sino también en defensa de sus extensos intereses comerciales en el Medio Oriente –lo que probablemente explica el retraso en reconocer al consejo de transición libio, por ejemplo. “Al final del día, Brasil está siguiendo el principio de la ONU de agotar todos los métodos pacíficos antes de una intervención,” señaló uno de los académicos. Sin embargo, hay consenso en que Brasil podría ser más activo en relación a los derechos humanos en la arena internacional, quizá comenzando a adoptar una posición más crítica en el consejo de derechos humanos de la ONU.

¿Dónde queda parada cuba?

La Presidenta Dilma Rousseff hará su primera visita a Cuba el 31 de enero, llevando con ella a una delegación comercial. Rousseff estará bajo mucha presión para decir algo acerca de los derechos humanos en Cuba. Como mujer, ex disidente política y prisionera, y una defensora pública de los derechos humanos, Rousseff corre el riesgo de lucir hipócrita y cínica si no es vista diciendo o haciendo algo en Cuba. Los disidentes cubanos, liderados por las activistas mujeres de alto perfil, incluyendo a la blogger Yoani Sánchez, y el grupo de Damas de Blanco, han hecho un requerimiento de audiencia con Rousseff sin ningún resultado.

Sin embargo, Brasil otorgó a Sánchez una visa de visitante por 30 días el 25 de enero. Este es un oportuno y deliberado gesto de apoyo simbólico (Cuba nunca le ha permitido a Sánchez viajar) que no pasará desapercibido en La Habana. Sánchez, quien peticionó a Rousseff personalmente a través de un video-mensaje en su blog, escribió que se vio a sí misma en una fotografía recientemente difundida de Rousseff como una joven activista política. “Me siento como Dilma”, escribió.

Desafortunadamente para Rousseff, ella está yendo a Cuba justo después de la muerte de otro disidente político en huelga de hambre, Wilman Villar, que murió el 19 de enero, a la edad de 31 años, después de 51 días en huelga de hambre (ver Télex). En una terrible ironía, cuando Lula da Silva hizo su viaje de despedida a Cuba como presidente, en febrero del 2010, otro disidente en huelga de hambre también murió (Orlando Zapata Tamayo). La torpe negativa de Lula de hacer algún comentario en ese entonces, provocó indignación en Brasil y en otras partes.

A pesar de la presión sobre ella, es probable que Rousseff siga el ejemplo de Lula y no haga ningún comentario público. Itamaraty ha asumido la visión que las conversaciones solamente deberían tener lugar en privado y detrás de la escena. Pero, como el diario conservador brasilero O Globo editorializó el 26 de enero, “Nadie espera que de un momento al otro el gobierno brasilero se dejará convencer por los disidentes cubanos. Pero el país tiene todas las condiciones para crear un puente entre los viejos revolucionarios, los disidentes, la oposición y los sectores más dinámicos en Cuba. Brasil tiene credibilidad para hacer eso”.

• La disputa argentina

La poderosa federación industrial de Brasil, Fiesp, pidió esta semana una audiencia con la Presidenta de Argentina, Cristina Fernández, para discutir las nuevas restricciones comerciales que han sido impuestas por Argentina desde el 1 de febrero. Argentina tuvo un déficit comercial de US$4,24mm con Brasil en 2011, un incremento del 20% sobre el año anterior, a pesar del incrementado proteccionismo argentino, de acuerdo con el instituto oficial de estadísticas de Argentina (Indec). Las importaciones argentinas provenientes de Brasil crecieron un 22% a US$21,94mm, mientras que sus exportaciones a Brasil crecieron un 23%, a US$17,70mm. Argentina tuvo de un superávit comercial general de US$10,35mm en el 2011, una declinación del 11% con respecto el año anterior; las exportaciones totalizaron US$84,27mm; y las importaciones US$73,92mm.

• Se eleva el comercio Brasil-Cuba

Brasil está invirtiendo US$800m en la modernización del puerto de Mariel en Cuba, a través del gigante de la construcción Odebrecht y el Banco Nacional de Desarrollo de Brasil (Bndes). También ha ofrecido a Cuba tecnología brasilera para establecer una industria local de etanol basado en la caña de azúcar, y está proveyendo US$200m en créditos para pequeños agricultores para la compra de equipamiento agrícola (hecho en Brasil). De acuerdo con el ministerio de comercio de Brasil, Brasil exporto bienes por un valor de US$550m a Cuba en el 2011, un incremento del 32% año en año y compuesto por bienes básicos e industriales. Las importaciones desde Cuba tuvieron un valor de US$91,2mm, un incremento del 25% año en año. Curiosamente, la mayoría de las importaciones (80%) estuvo compuesta de suministros e insumos médicos.

MEXICO | Supreme Court ruling. On 21 March the supreme court voted 3:2 not to release Florence Cassez, a French citizen, from prison - but it did order a fresh investigation into her case. The supreme court justices accepted that there had been failings in the process which led to the conviction of Cassez for kidnapping, but ruled that these failings did not warrant releasing Cassez, as her legal team had demanded.

    The supreme court president, Juan Silva Meza, called on the other two powers in the constitution to respect the supreme court’s judgment. The executive had been strongly critical of Cassez’s attempt to challenge her conviction and sentence to 60 years in prison. President Felipe Calderón himself had alluded to the case, calling on the supreme court to stand up for victims of crime and not to allow legal niceties to allow impunity.

    Cassez has been in prison since December 2005. Genaro García Luna, then head of the now disbanded Agencia Federal de Investigación (AFI) but now minister of public security, has admitted that her arrest, and that of her boyfriend at the latter’s ranch on Morelos, was staged for the TV cameras. Cassez was also denied immediate access to the French consul after her arrest.

• Anti-dumping

Brazil and Argentina are not the only countries smarting from Mexico’s renewed international competitiveness. On 19 March the US imposed anti-dumping duties of between 6% and 30.3% on Mexican built fridge-freezers. On 21 March the US also imposed anti-dumping duties on Mexican-made galvanised steel wire.

• Tourism

In 2011 the number of international tourists visiting Mexico increased by 2%, year-on-year, to a record 22.7m. The increase came despite the surge in gang-related violence. Sceptics point out that, globally, international tourism increased by 4.4% in 2011. Optimists noted that Malia Obama, President Barack Obama’s 13-year-old daughter, came to Oaxaca, Mexico for her Spring Break over the week of 16 to 23 March. 

President Horacio Cartes stressed in his inaugural address on 15 August that he would not allow the guerrilla group Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo (EPP) to “dictate the agenda”. Just one week later his first meaningful action as head of state was a direct response to the EPP which had thrown down the gauntlet by invading an estate and killing five security guards [WR-13-33]. Cartes signed a decree granting him a free hand to deploy the armed forces to tackle internal security threats as he sees fit. It sailed through congress despite the protestations of the left-wing opposition. Cartes also put up a US$1m reward for information leading to the capture of EPP members.

The decree modifies the national defence and internal security law to grant special powers to the head of state to deploy the armed forces “to confront any external or internal aggression which endangers the country’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity”. Within 24 hours it had been approved by the chamber of deputies and the senate, been promulgated by Cartes and entered into force. Senator Fernando Lugo must have wondered if his presidency (2008-2012) might not have turned out rather differently if he could have commanded such support in congress.

Eleven senators from Lugo’s Frente Guasu (FG) coalition and other left-wing parties opposed the reform, arguing that it was “a serious step backwards for a democratic government” which could be used to “legalise repression”, raising the spectre of a return to the methods employed by the Stroessner dictatorship (1954-1989). Specifically they argued that the modification of the law provided considerable latitude to the head of state to abuse the special powers and use the military, for instance, to crack down on internal dissenters.

Senator Mirtha Gusinky, of the ruling Asociación Nacional Republicana-Partido Colorado (ANR-PC), argued passionately that there was no comparison with the dictatorship which was firmly in the past. “Now the most urgent thing is to eliminate the EPP,” she said. The EPP gained notoriety for the kidnap and brutal murder of Cecilia Cubas, the daughter of Gusinky and former president Raúl Cubas Grau (1998-1999), in 2005. The opposition Partido Liberal Radical Auténtico (PLRA) and the Unión Nacional de Ciudadanos Éticos (Unace) also voted in favour of the decree in congress, which retained an element of control over the executive branch by introducing a clause empowering congress to call time on any declared military intervention in internal security.

Cartes signed another decree on 24 August, allowing the armed forces to begin operations against the EPP in the departments of Concepción, San Pedro and Amambay. Some 400 soldiers, including 60 members of the special forces, have been deployed. During a visit to Concepción, however, Cartes sought, indirectly, to allay any fears that he would abuse his special powers or that the increased militarisation of internal security would lead to repression. He stressed that he was “at war against the absence of the State”. He said it was incumbent on his government to bring “health, development and work”, and, after meeting local mayors, he described himself as “your tool”.

The inclusion of Amambay among the departments where the military can operate is due to the growing suspicion of links between the EPP and drug-trafficking groups (see sidebar). Pedro Juan Caballero, the capital of Amambay, is located just across the border from the Brazilian city of Ponta Porá in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. It has become a centre of Brazilian-run drug transhipment, the smuggling of exported Brazilian firearms (together with other weapons) back into Brazil, and money laundering.

• Cocaine seizure

Police seized 1.8 tonnes of cocaine on 22 August in an operation in the departments of Concepciόn and Presidente Hayes. They also arrested five suspects, confiscated “a large quantity” of weapons and discovered clandestine landing strips. Authorities are speculating that the EPP provided protection for the drug-trafficking group in exchange for arms. Shortly afterwards, the interior minister, Francisco de Vargas, announced a purge of the police command in Concepciόn. De Vargas said that the police had to be beyond reproach and that there was disturbing evidence of complicity with drug traffickers.

The announcement by the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) government led by President Daniel Ortega of plans to purchase new Russian tanks has grabbed attention. Indicative of burgeoning bilateral cooperation which has gathered pace since Ortega took office for a second term in 2007, the announcement has attracted attention not only from the local political opposition but also the US and neighbouring Costa Rica, which has historically tense relations with Nicaragua due to their various territorial disputes.

On 25 April national daily La Prensa cited military spokesperson Manuel Guevara Rocha as saying that the planned purchase was part of efforts to overhaul the armed forces. Guevara did not give further details, but the same day Russia’s state-owned news agency, Sputnik, reported that Russia was preparing to hand over some 20 modernised T-72B1 tanks to Nicaragua as part of an agreement signed in 2015 for the provision of 50 tanks – the total cost of which is put at US$80m. With the remainder reportedly due to be delivered at the end of 2016/early 2017, the Sputnik report notes that the purchase follows other military hardware bought by Nicaragua from Russia in recent years. This includes 12 ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft auto-cannons in 2014; a batch of GAZ-2330 Tiger armoured infantry vehicles in 2012; and two Mi-17V-5 helicopters in 2009. Sputnik also reported that Russia and Nicaragua were moving forward with a plan to supply Nicaragua’s navy with two modern Molnia-class missile ships.

The FSLN government has maintained silence as to the planned use of the tanks. On 29 April FSLN bench leader in the national assembly Edwin Castro told reporters that they were to be used for anti-narcotrafficking efforts but the next day the government released a curt statement distancing itself from his remarks, recalling that only the president and armed forces are authorised to address issues of national security. The opposition coalition, Coalición Nacional por la Democracia, led by the Partido Liberal Independiente (PLI), has said that it will request information from the ruling party in the FSLN-controlled legislature while PLI deputy Javier Vallejos – who heads up the legislature’s peace, defence & governance committee – expressed surprise at the purchase. He also questioned how it was to be financed given that the legislature had not approved a loan for it.

The planned acquisition of the tanks also prompted an international response. The US ambassador to Nicaragua, Laura F Dogu, was cited by the local press on 28 April as saying that Washington wanted to know the motives for the purchase. On 26 April Costa Rica’s foreign minister, Manuel González, told the national daily La Nación that the concern was not that the purchase of military hardware represented a threat to Costa Rica as such but rather that a Central American country had decided to embark on an “arms race”. González said that rather than investing in military hardware, the sub-region should spend more on sectors like healthcare, technology, and infrastructure.

Other cooperation

The discussions regarding the tanks took place amid other signs of strengthening cooperation with Russia. Between 4 and 6 April Russia’s deputy minister for industry, Alexander Nikolayevich Morozov, paid a visit to Managua. After meeting a high-level delegation headed up by Ortega’s son, Laureano, the presidential adviser on investment, Morozov announced a US$250m-US$300m loan for strategic scientific-technical projects for socio-economic development. The loan will be used for things like upgrading Augusto C. Sandino airport, Managua’s main airport; acquiring aircraft; constructing a complex of silos and mills for the storage and processing of basic grains; and a system of radars.

• Military spending

For all the concerns about military spending, it is worth pointing out that Nicaragua spent just C$1.952bn (US$68m) on the military in 2015 on the latest figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), down from C$2.113bn (US$74m) in 2014. While Costa Rica and Panama do not have a military, this still compares with Q$2.1bn (US$273m) for Guatemala in 2015, US$223m in El Salvador and L$7.0bn (US$300m) in Honduras. Meanwhile some political commentators suggest that the purchase of the tanks might actually have more to do with Russia than Ortega’s military ambitions given its traditional buyers like Brazil and Venezuela are facing economic difficulties.

President Juan Manuel Santos handed the maximum leader of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc), ‘Timochenko’ (Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri), an AK-47 converted into a spade on 27 June. Santos presented this symbol of the end of the hemisphere’s longest armed conflict, which dates back to 27 May 1964, and the new life awaiting demobilised guerrillas, to Timochenko in a ceremony held in the municipality of Mesetas in the south-eastern department of Meta to mark the completion of the disarmament process. The Farc will now begin its transformation into a political force and guerrillas their reinsertion into society, but significant challenges lie ahead, not least the transitional justice process.

“This is the end of this absurd war which not only lasted for five decades but claimed 8m victims and more than 220,000 lives,” President Santos said. “There are days that shape our lives; today 27 June for me…is when weapons were exchanged for words. I can say from the bottom of my heart that to witness this day makes it worthwhile having been president of Colombia,” he added.

Santos said that the Farc had ceased to exist as a guerrilla group after completing the disarmament process under the supervision of the United Nations (UN). The head of the UN mission, Jean Arnault, who attended the ceremony held in one of the 26 demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) camps, which together have housed 6,803 guerrillas, said that a total of 7,132 weapons had been handed over, placed in containers, and guerrillas issued with certificates permitting them to embark on the reintegration process.

No photos were taken of guerrillas handing over their weapons because the Farc refused to give the impression it was surrendering. But there are photos of 44 containers full of weapons, all verified by the UN. Arnault pointed out that in other disarmament processes overseen by the UN armed groups had kept their best weapons and handed over old ones but that the quantity and quality of weapons surrendered by the Farc was exemplary.

“Yesterday the people’s army, today the people’s hope; this day does not mark the end of the Farc…but the end of our 53-year uprising,” Timochenko said, ignoring the fact that even Santos, whose approval rating has sunk to just 26%, is popular by comparison with the Farc. Timochenko raised legitimate concerns, however, about “the growing paramilitary threat” and murder of social leaders in Colombia. During the disarmament process alone as many as 37 social leaders have been murdered in Colombia (see sidebar).

Former president Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), now a senator for the right-wing Centro Democrático (CD), begrudgingly acknowledged that the handover of weapons was positive although he queried what had happened to “the 10,000 weapons the Farc acquired from [Peru’s former intelligence chief Vladimiro] Montesinos”. If Uribe’s scepticism was predictable, the reaction of Juan Carlos Pinzón, defence minister under Santos from 2011 to 2015 and ambassador to the US until last month, would have come as an unwelcome surprise.

Pinzón poured cold water on what the UN secretary general, António Guterres, had validated as “another historic landmark in the peace process”. Pinzón said that it was a mistake to celebrate the handover of weapons “as if it were all of them [when] it is clear that the Farc and dissidents [still] have weapons”. Pinzón criticised “an absence of action” under the present government, stressing that the country could not continue to be obsessed by just two things: the peace and the Farc.

Pinzón will return to Colombia on 5 July to carry out a tour of 100 municipalities to establish whether there is popular support for him launching a presidential bid ahead of general elections in May 2018. Judging by his criticism of the government and his praise of some of the “wonderful things” achieved during the Uribe administration, Pinzón could be courted by the CD.

There is some justification for Pinzón’s suggestion that the disarmament process is not definitive and that the announcement of the end of the armed conflict with the Farc is premature. This is clearly not the Farc’s complete arsenal. But the UN is also working with the Farc to destroying some 900 hidden arms caches in its former areas of influence (77 have been accounted for so far).

Nine arrested for Bogotá bomb attack

Eight days after the fatal bomb attack at the Bogotá shopping centre Centro Andino [WR-17-24], Colombia’s attorney general, Néstor Humberto Martínez, announced the capture of nine people suspected of carrying out the attack. They belong to the little-known Movimiento Revolucionario Popular (MRP), which has links with the guerrilla group Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN).

The MRP is a remnant of urban militias established in Bogotá by ‘Pablito’ (Gustavo Aníbal Giraldo Quinchía), the military leader of the ELN believed to have distanced himself from the guerrilla group’s central command (Coce) after peace negotiations began with the Santos administration. Martínez said those captured on 24 June had been arrested in March for carrying explosives and maps and were charged with planning to carry out a terrorist attack in Bogotá only to be set free by a judge on the grounds that these were not used.

The MRP operates in triads. Leaders leave instructions in pigeonholes: one member of the triad plans the operation; one executes it; and one is an intermediary, the only one who knows the identity of the others.

• Demobilised guerrillas

The Farc, which is aiming to become a political party in August, has implored the government to concentrate its full firepower on Colombia’s neoparamilitary groups to help ensure that demobilised guerrillas do not suffer the same fate as that of thousands of their forerunners after forming the radical left-wing Unión Patriótica (UP) party in the 1980s.

• IMF concludes visit

On 22 June Colombia’s finance ministry (Minhacienda) reported that a mission from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had concluded a visit to the country to evaluate Colombia’s anti-money laundering (AML) efforts, the combating of the financing of terrorism (CFT), and the financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. A Minhacienda statement said that the visit had been a “success” and that the IMF mission acknowledged the advances made in these areas by Colombia since the last such visit in 2008. The statement notes that following the conclusion of the visit, the mission will have six months to draft a report that will be presented at the Latin America Financial Action Task Force (Gafilat) meeting due in December.

In the space of two days in January, over 100 inmates linked to the Brazilian criminal organisation Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) escaped from prisons some 3,000km apart in Paraguay and Brazil. This once again raises questions about the operations of Brazil’s largest drug trafficking organisation (DTO) and the efficiency of the public security apparatus in both countries. 

The scale of the prison break in Pedro Juan Caballero, a city in Paraguay’s Amambay department on the border with Brazil, was unprecedented. A total of 75 inmates escaped from the city’s prison on 19 January, having dug a 15-metre tunnel from inside the prison’s main building – although it later emerged that a large number of the escapees had simply walked out through the prison gates, unimpeded by either prison guards or a military battalion stationed nearby. Most of the escaped prisoners, of which around 40 are of Brazilian nationality while the rest are Paraguayan, are known to have links with either Sérgio de Arruda Quintiliano Neto ‘Minotauro’ or Levi Adriano Felício, both PCC leaders currently behind bars in Brazil.

Just a day later, on 20 January, 26 prisoners escaped from the Complexo Penitenciário Francisco d’Oliveira Conde in Rio Branco, the state capital of Acre in Brazil’s northern region, by digging their way out through their cell walls and scaling the three-metre perimeter wall with ropes made of sheets. The fugitives are understood to be members of either the PCC or the Bonde dos 13 (B13), a DTO local to Acre which has formed an alliance with the PCC in that state.

The prison break in Paraguay caused something of a political mess for President Mario Abdo Benítez, who is already on his third justice minister and second interior minister in less than a year and half, and whose government has been taking a series of measures as it seeks to counter the country’s prison crisis and deep-rooted corruption. In Brazil, the prison break was taken in the stride of a series of violent incidents in the state of Acre since the start of the year, believed to be linked to turf wars between the PCC and its national rival, the Comando Vermelho (CV), for the control of drug routes.

• Paraguay’s prison crisis

Paraguay’s President Mario Abdo Benítez passed a law declaring a year-long state of emergency in the country’s prisons in September 2019, following a number of security failings highlighting the national prison crisis, including a deadly riot last June [SSR-19-07]. The last months of 2019 saw a shake-up in the leadership of the country’s public security agencies, as well as the deployment of military security reinforcements under this new law. This made the mass break in January all the more embarrassing for the authorities. The Pedro Juan Caballero prison director was arrested along with 30 guards, but suspicions of deep-rooted PCC-related corruption high up in government are now adding to the Abdo Benítez administration’s difficulties.

There is no doubt that the prison break in Pedro Juan Caballero exposes, once again, the systemic corruption within Paraguay’s security forces and the PCC’s consolidated influence beyond Brazil, notably in parts of Paraguay. It is less clear if, and how, the DTO has stood to gain from the evasion of 100 of its presumed members (a small number of whom have been re-captured in both countries).  

Both Acre in Brazil and Amambay in Paraguay are strategic areas in the drug trade. Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon, borders Peru and Bolivia, two of the world’s largest cocaine producers (after Colombia). Amambay sits on Paraguay’s border with Brazil, one of the areas in the landlocked country in which Brazilian DTOs have extended their influence for strategic reasons – both for its position as a transit point for Paraguay-produced marijuana and drugs arriving from Bolivia, and as a region where DTOs can operate relatively undisturbed. Although the PCC is the dominant criminal force in Amambay, the CV holds sway over a majority of cities in Acre.

After the prison break in Rio Branco, Acre state authorities appealed to Brazil’s federal police (PF) and the national intelligence agency (Abin) to investigate possible links with the escape in Paraguay the previous day, but it remains uncertain that the two were connected. In Paraguay, it rapidly emerged that the justice ministry, headed by Cecilia Pérez, had flagged the risk of a prison break in the country in December 2019, after receiving intelligence that the PCC was offering an US$80,000 ‘reward’ in exchange for helping their members escape.

In Brazil, the Rio Branco prison break followed a violent few weeks in January, notably a mass killing in a roadside bar on 18 January, of which the six victims were believed to be linked to the CV. Since losing the control of Paraguayan drug routes to the PCC, the CV has been seeking to expand its influence to other regions along Brazil’s borders. As a result, Brazil’s border states such as Acre live in a constant state of insecurity amid warring DTOs and the high violence this causes.

A feature by Brazilian magazine Revista Piauí, published on 30 January, also notes that escapes and rebellions in Brazilian prisons follow a seasonal pattern, as they are regularly repeated in the first month of the year (as well as August and October). Amongst the reasons cited for this are holidaying prison security staff and the timing of temporary releases – when some prisoners are let out on temporary bail as part of the ‘semi-closed regime’, allowing for the easier transfer of information between inmates and the outside world.      

In the opinion of Gabriel Feltran, a professor at the Universidade de São Carlos (UFSCar) in Brazil’s São Paulo state and the author of a book on the PCC, who spoke to Ponte, a Brazilian public security-focused independent news site, the escape of the imprisoned gang members “changes absolutely nothing […] to the PCC’s operation.” It has however spurred renewed cooperation between Brazilian and Paraguayan authorities. Paraguay’s Pérez met her Brazilian counterpart Sérgio Moro in Brasília on 30 January to discuss strategies to improve their respective penitentiary systems and fight organised crime. In an interview with Brazilian daily O Estado de São Paulo the previous day, Pérez stressed that the PCC is a regional challenge and should be dealt with as such.

The structure of the PCC

In the same way that most public security experts consider that Brazilian authorities’ strategy of transferring imprisoned presumed gang leaders to high security prisons with the aim of limiting their reach and activity is inefficient in interrupting the DTOs’ operations [SSR-19-03], the carefully controlled structure and hierarchy of the PCC is unlikely to be impacted by the swelling of its ranks with escapees.   

February 2022 was a busy month in the Caribbean for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Amongst other activity, it concluded two Article IV Consultations, with final Executive Board approval, with Jamaica and Dominica; issued a ‘Concluding Statement’ following an Article IV mission to Belize; and reached a Staff-Level Agreement with Suriname following the first review of the December 2021 Extended Fund Facility (EFF). Post-coronavirus (Covid-19) recovery and debt sustainability were the threads that ran through all this activity.

Jamaica

Up until the Covid-19 crisis hit, Jamaica had been something of an IMF poster child. In April 2018, the IMF noted in its latest Article IV Consultation that Jamaica had been performing exceptionally under the terms of the economic recovery programme that had been put in place in May 2013.

• IMF on Jamaica

In its April 2018 report following the Article IV Consultation the IMF said: “With broad-based social and political support for reforms, the Jamaican government - over two administrations - has embarked on a path of fiscal discipline, monetary and financial sector reforms, and wide-ranging structural improvements to break a decades-long cycle of high debt and low growth.” 

Before the start of its economic reform programme, Jamaica’s public debt was running at 142% of GDP, with a current account deficit of around 12% of GDP. Before the pandemic, Jamaica’s public debt had fallen to 94% of GDP in 2019 and was on track to reach the target of 60% by Fiscal Year (FY) 2025/2026. And the country had recorded primary fiscal surpluses of at least 7% of GDP for six years (brought down from a deficit of 11% of GDP in 2009). All that progress was then threatened by the effects of Covid-19.

In its latest assessment, issued on 15 February 2022, the IMF noted that a 10% contraction in the economy, and the suspension of the fiscal rule in order to help mitigate the effects of the contraction, led to a fiscal deficit of 3.1% in FY2020/21. Thankfully the economy is now rebounding, with projected growth of 8.2% in 2021/22 and 3.5% in 2022/23. The fiscal balance is set to return to a surplus of 0.3% in both 2021/22 and 2022/23, and public debt, which climbed back to 108.1% of GDP in 2020/21, is set to improve to 91.6% in 2021/22 and 84.7% in 2022/23.

This is all relatively encouraging, given the circumstances, but the IMF was warning of downside risks even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It wrote: “The economy is rebounding but risks to the outlook are significant…Covid-19 remains the main risk. Renewed Covid-19 waves in Jamaica or abroad could lead to a more prolonged disruption of tourism, trade, and capital flows. Another risk is posed by the uncertain duration of global inflationary pressures, which have boosted inflation to well above the central bank’s target range of 4-6 percent. Natural disasters continue to be an ever-present risk.”

Dominica

The latest Article IV process with Dominica was concluded on 14 February with an IMF Executive Board statement commending the Dominican authorities “for their pandemic response to support households and businesses” and noting that “the outlook for medium-term growth is promising but remains subject to significant downside risks, including from the pandemic trajectory and recovery of tourism”.

According to the IMF, Dominica’s economy contracted by 11% in 2020, with a modest recovery of an estimated 3.7% growth in 2021. Something of a cushion was provided by the “exceptionally high revenue” derived from the Citizenship by Investment (CBI) programme, but, despite the record CBI revenue, “the sharp decline in tax revenue and increase in health spending and social transfers led to large fiscal deficits in 2020 and 2021 and caused the public debt to peak at an estimated 106 percent of GDP in 2020”.

As with Jamaica and elsewhere in the Caribbean, the IMF sees the risks to be “skewed to the downside”. They include a resurgence of Covid-19, CBI revenue falling below projected levels, and weakness in the financial sector. The IMF’s recommendations include the need to save some CBI revenue “for self-insurance against natural disasters and public debt reduction”, and it calls for “sustained reforms to ensure debt sustainability, strengthen the financial sector, and improve climate resilience”.

Belize

On 24 February, the IMF issued a ‘Concluding Statement’ which provides the preliminary findings of the latest Article IV Mission. The story is a familiar one, but with some interesting additional features. The familiar bit is that a collapse in tourism led to an economic contraction in 2020 (of 16.7% in Belize’s case) and an increase in public debt (to 133% of GDP), “a level that was assessed as unsustainable in the 2021 Article IV Consultation”.

To address the problem of debt sustainability, in April 2021 the Belizean government adopted a Medium-Term Recovery Plan (MTRP) which seeks to reduce public debt to 85% of GDP in 2025 and 70% in 2030 “through the implementation of fiscal consolidation, growth-enhancing structural reforms, and debt restructuring”. The IMF notes that “significant progress” towards restoring debt sustainability was made in 2021, with a reduction in public expenditure of 3.4% of GDP in FY2021. Interestingly, Belize also completed a debt for marine protection swap under which a subsidiary of US-based global environmental organisation The Nature Conservancy lent funds to Belize to buy back US$553m worth of superbond (30% of GDP) at a discounted price of 55 cents in the dollar. In exchange, Belize committed to increase expenditure on marine conservation until 2041 and to expand its Biodiversity Protection Zones from 16% of its ocean area to 30% by 2026. As a consequence, Belize’s public debt was reduced by 12% of GDP.

Economic activity is recovering, with 12.5% growth in 2021 and 6.5% in 2022 projected. Public debt has declined from 133% of GDP in 2020 to 108% in 2021 and is projected to reduce to 84% of GDP by 2032. However, as with all the other countries in the region reviewed by the IMF, risks to outlook are seen to be substantial “and tilted to the downside”, and the authorities are urged to “prepare contingency plans in case public debt does not fall as planned”. Such plans should include raising the goods and services tax rate, broadening the tax base, taxing property and capital gains, cutting non-priority spending, and restructuring public debt.

Suriname

On 14 February, the IMF issued an end-of-mission statement following the first review of the Extended Arrangement under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) of December 2021. The key assessment was that “Suriname’s economic programme remains on track, with key quantitative targets met and with continued progress on an ambitious set of reforms”. The IMF added that “the economic stabilisation and recovery are underway and both fiscal and external balances are improving”.

Inflation is one of the key problems, running at 60.6% at end-December, but it has fallen substantially since last August on a month-on-month basis and is expected to decline to 26% by end-2022 and 12% by end-2024. Public debt is estimated to have fallen from 148% of GDP at end-2020 to 125% at end-2021. Growth is expected to reach 1.8% in 2022 rising over the medium-term to 3%. In addition to the usual caveats about a resurgence of Covid-19, the IMF warns about the possibility of “delays in key fiscal reforms or debt restructuring” and of an intensification of banking system risks.

Deforestation in Colombia reached its lowest level in nine years in 2022, according to new figures released by the environment ministry, with a particular fall in deforestation in some of the areas that have been worst affected by Colombia’s internal conflict. The government claims that this is a sign of progress in its flagship ‘total peace’ initiative.

The deforestation figures for 2022, published on 12 July, showed a dramatic drop in the rate of forest loss in Colombia since President Gustavo Petro took office last August. A total of 123,517 hectares (ha) of forest were lost last year, down 29.1% on the 174,103 ha that were cleared in 2021. In the Colombian Amazon, deforestation was down by 36.4% at 71,185 ha, while deforestation in national parks was down by 12.8%.

An environment ministry statement noted that the bulk of this drop in deforestation happened in the second half of 2022, which it said showed clear results in Petro’s plan to put environmental protection at the heart of his government’s agenda. According to the statement, deforestation in the second six months of the year accounted for just 28% of annual deforestation, while 72% of the year’s deforestation took place in the first six months of the year under former president Iván Duque (2018-2022). The government is cherry-picking its statistics to some degree – the first half of the year typically sees much greater deforestation than the second, due to farmers’ burning of land during the dry season. However, the same report showed that the downward trend in deforestation remained strong in the first months of 2023, during the traditional fire season; deforestation in the Colombian Amazon in the first quarter of the year was down by 76% year-on-year, falling from 50,500 ha to 12,000 ha.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of the drop in deforestation was the fact that it was concentrated in some of the departments that have suffered most in Colombia’s internal conflict. Deforestation was down by 50% in Caquetá department, by 37% in Guaviare, 34% in Meta, and 15% in Putumayo. The environment ministry pointed to community-level agreements in these departments as having played a significant role in reducing deforestation, but also highlighted “the inclusion of deforestation in the Total Peace policy”.

The total peace initiative, which takes a holistic approach to peacebuilding with an emphasis on the social, economic and environmental causes of conflict, aims to learn from the 2016 peace accords with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) guerrilla group. That agreement was followed by surging deforestation in areas previously held by the Farc. This time around, the government is aiming to prevent another wave of deforestation following hoped-for peace agreements with dissident Farc units and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) guerrilla group, by preparing policies that are expected to include a scheme under which farmers will receive payments from the government to harvest Amazonian fruits rather than clear trees.

Further such measures are likely to be announced if peace talks advance with the Estado Mayor Central (EMC), the largest grouping of dissident Farc units which on 8 July announced that it had agreed to a bilateral ceasefire and begin negotiations with the government. Given that the EMC’s stronghold is in the departments of Caquetá, Guaviare and Meta, all of which are located on the frontier between agricultural land and the Colombian Amazon, the Petro administration will be aiming to marry both peacebuilding and environmental safeguards during the negotiations.

EMC

The EMC, which groups together around 3,500 members of dissident Farc units, is now on its second attempt at a peace process with the government after the 8 July announcement of a ceasefire and plans to launch dialogue. An earlier bilateral ceasefire, announced at the start of the year, was suspended by the government on 22 May after it accused the EMC of murdering four indigenous teenagers who had attempted to escape after being forcibly recruited by the EMC.