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*** Japan’s latest move to secure territorial rights. On 7 January, Japan’s state minister for oceanic policies and territorial issues, Ichita Yamamoto, announced that the Japanese government is to take some 280 remote islands into state ownership in order to strengthen control of the country’s maritime territory. Yamamoto said: “We will register the remote islands as state property to enhance their management.”

Japan has about 400 islands, many of which do not even have names. Last year an advisory panel to Yamamoto recommended that the government set up a system to monitor ownership changes, to name the islands, and to survey their environment and the natural resources in surrounding waters.

This move comes at a time when tensions between Japan and China over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands continue to escalate, with the atmosphere exacerbated by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit on 26 December to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine to Japan’s war dead.

Against this background, Beijing will have been watching closely the visit this week to India by Japan’s Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera, which will be followed by a visit by the prime minister in late January. Onodera and his Indian counterpart AK Antony agreed to enhance defence exchanges in general and to hold regular joint training exercises between Japan’s Maritime Self-Defence Force and the Indian Navy. The first such joint exercise was held in June 2012 in Japanese waters and was followed up by one in the Indian Ocean in December 2013.

*** Egypt to vote on new constitution. Egypt is to hold a referendum on its new military-inspired constitution on 14-15 January. The 2012 constitution, drawn up by an Islamist-dominated panel, was approved by 64% on a turnout of 33%. The government is hoping to do better than that.

Political parties and movements that have announced they will vote "Yes" for the constitution include the Salafist Al-Nour Party and liberal parties such as Al-Dustur Party, Al-Wafd Party, and the Free Egyptians Party. The Popular Current and Tamarrud (Rebellion) movements are also campaigning for a yes vote. However, the Strong Egypt Party, the 6 April Youth Movement, the Revolutionary Socialists movement, and the No To Military Trials movement are against a range of articles in the new constitution, such as one which allows military trials for civilians in some cases. Another article they object to says that the defence minister can only be appointed with the approval of the military council.

The pro-Muslim Brotherhood National Alliance to Support Legitimacy (NASL), the Islamic Group, and the Salafist Call movement have all said they will boycott the referendum.

*** Israelis row over defence spending.  On 12 May, Israel’s Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon launched an astonishing public attack on the finance ministry, accusing it of undermining the country’s security.  The defence minister made his criticisms during an appearance in front of the Knesset’s Labour and Welfare Committee.

The cause of Yaalon’s anger is the finance ministry’s attitude towards the 2015 defence budget.  He said: “This is part of a technique to harm security and the IDF [Israel Defence Force], and mainly those who serve.  There is a serious problem here, of a government ministry that does not live up to its word, does not meet written agreements, and does not carry out government decisions and laws.”

Yaalon then recalled that a few months ago Finance Minister Yair Lapid had blamed “tycoons, the Haredis, and the career soldiers” for economic injustices.  He also recalled that the head of the budgets branch of the ministry of finance had said something similar shortly afterwards, blaming “tycoons, big [workers’] committees, and career soldiers”.

Yaalon added: “If this is not a systematic delegitimization of career soldiers, which unfortunately is dripping down [to society], then what is?”

The finance ministry responded by calling Yaalon’s remarks a crude attack on public servants.  It also said: “The formula is simple: any addition to the defence budget will come at the expense of the public.”

*** Armenia calls for referendum on Nagorno-Karabakh.  On 13 May, Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan said that “a legally binding expression of the free will”, by which he meant a referendum, should be the basis for resolving the status of the Armenian-populated Azerbaijani enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

*** South Korea demands say over Japan’s ‘collective self-defence’.  As Japan moves closer to reinterpreting its constitution to allow for participation in collective self-defence, a South Korean government official said on 13 May: “The Korean government’s explicit consent is necessary when it comes to issues related to the Korean Peninsula.  Japan is well aware of it.”

President Juan Orlando Hernández reported on 4 August that the number of homicides in the first half of the year fell by 600 to 2,893, a decline of 17%, on the same period in 2013. Hernández, who took office on 27 January, said it was “the obligation of this generation to hand to our children a peaceful Honduras”.

Days earlier, on 30 July, President Hernández visited Chamelecón, the most violent district of the most violent city in Honduras, San Pedro Sula, with a homicide rate of 133.3 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013. Hernández, with a bullet-proof jacket not entirely concealed under his shirt, visited houses which had been taken over by warring street gangs (maras), displacing dozens of families, and public squares. The visit was designed to mark his government’s success at “changing the image of Chamelecón”. Hernández said that there had been no homicides in the district for 43 days and that residents were returning. He added that peace would gradually be extended throughout Honduras and that “this is how we’ll stop child migrants from going to the US”.

Hernández sees the ‘pacification’ of Chamelecón as evidence of the success of his government’s militarised security policy. A combined military-police force conducts regular patrols in the district. The maras, however, are likely to have called a halt to their turf war while monitoring the actions of the security forces.

Hernández says the patrols are there to stay but the real test of the success of the ‘pacification’ of the area will be what opportunities his government can provide for a brighter future. Hernández maintains that this is in hand. He says that “artificial turf pitches and megaparks” will be built, and that social programmes, such as ‘Vida Mejor’, which aims to provide 800,000 poor families with a safe roof over their heads, biomass cooking stoves, vegetable plots, water filters and medicine; and ‘Recreovías’, which provides cultural, artistic and sporting activities, are being rolled out.

Results

Hernández conceded that nationwide the public would not perceive the positive results because despite the downwards trajectory, the reduction in violence to acceptable levels would take years. Speaking during the graduation of new police officers in the central city of Comayagua, he said that “like a wounded animal”, organised crime would try and strike back but that there would be no turning back by his government and that there would soon be “more progress against common crime and organised crime”.

• Mayor arrested

The fact that Honduran authorities last week arrested a mayor who allegedly led a criminal network dedicated to drug trafficking and contract killings, shows the scale of the task ahead for President Juan Orlando Hernández. Arnaldo Urbina Soto was mayor of Yoro, the capital of the eponymous northern department. Diana Urbina Soto, Arnaldo’s sister, is a deputy for the ruling Partido Nacional (PN) representing Yoro.

COLOMBIA | Spying on peace talks. The newsmagazine Semana reported on 28 October that the commander of the army, General Jaime Lasprilla had held an emergency meeting with top-ranking military officers on 10 October after the head of Cime (the military intelligence centre), General Mauricio Forero, had reported the discovery of a Cime database which held emails from peace commissioner Sergio Jaramillo and other government officials, of the International Committee of the Red Cross and staff from the embassies of Norway (one of the countries sponsoring the peace talks), Switzerland and France; as well as those of 119 local and foreign journalists covering the peace process — 500 messages in all.

After Semana’s revelation, General Forero issued an official statement acknowledging that irregular surveillance activity by Cime had been uncovered and that the military had already opened a preliminary investigation. Interior minister Juan Fernando Cristo followed up with a request to the national prosecutor-general’s office to launch its own investigation. General Forero has been ordered to take a vacation until the investigations are over.

Prosecutor-general Eduardo Montealegre said the purported irregular surveillance was a ‘serious threat to democracy’ and that his office would look for any connections between the latest revelations and the similar Andrómeda case uncovered last February, which besides military officers, allegedly also involved prominent members of the right-wing opposition party Cambio Democrático (CD), which opposes the peace process. CD founder Álvaro Uribe, former president (2002-2010) and sitting senator, and CD president Oscar Iván Zuluaga, have been implicated in the Andrómeda case.

A military unit codenamed Andrómeda had covertly intercepted the communications of prominent political figures, including members of the government negotiating team at the peace talks with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FarC) guerrillas in Havana.

COLOMBIA | ELN closer to negotiating. On 19 October the leader of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), Nicolás Rodríguez Bautista (‘Gabino’) announced that there had been progress in the exploratory peace talks that the ELN has been holding with the Santos government since June.

He said that the two sides had made more progress on the drawing up of a negotiating agenda. Gabino said that an agreement had been reached to include more points on the agenda which would ‘soon be known by the country’, hinting that a ‘public negotiation phase’ is imminent. The following day the ELN issued a communiqué stating that after consultations with the Farc, it had agreed to pursue ‘separate but parallel’ peace negotiations with the government.

BOLIVIA | Moving towards shootdown? On 17 October the government led by President Evo Morales formally established the Comando de Seguridad y Defensa del Espacio Aéreo (CSDEA; Airspace Security and Defence Command), which is charged with drawing up the procedures to detect and intercept unauthorised flights over Bolivia airspace. This body, headed by General Melvin Arteaga Aguada, will have to determine if the aircraft is ‘infringer, illicit or hostile’ and to ‘apply the corresponding actions’, which could include shooting it down.

The shootdown law which provides for the creation of the CSDEA was promulgated by President Morales in April. Bolivia has since backtracked on the purchase of radars. Defence minister Rubén Saavedra said after General Arteaga’s investiture that the air force would be ‘technically assessing’ the proposals of various potential suppliers to determine how many radars are needed and where they should be located.

• “The newsmagazine Semana reported on 28 October that the commander of the army, General Jaime Lasprilla had held an emergency meeting with top-ranking military officers on 10 October after the head of Cime (the military intelligence centre), General Mauricio Forero, had reported the discovery of a Cime database which held emails from peace commissioner Sergio Jaramillo and other government officials, of the International Committee of the Red Cross and staff from the embassies of Norway (one of the countries sponsoring the peace talks), Switzerland and France; as well as those of 119 local and foreign journalists covering the peace process — 500 messages in all.”

COSTA RICA | Getting the country moving. On 23 February President Luis Guillermo Solís signed a law approving funds for the expansion of the San José-San Ramón national highway. On 5 February the legislature had approved a trust to provide the necessary funds (US$473m) for the highway scheme, a key project under the new government’s development plan. Other infrastructure projects are also being readied. This should boost the position of the centre-left Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC) government at a time when the private sector is raising concerns about job losses, continued high electricity costs and the entrenched fiscal deficit, which was 5.6% of GDP in 2014.

The San José-San Ramón project is expected to take four years. A US$524m contract for the works had been awarded to Brazil’s OAS, but in 2013 it was cancelled over alleged irregularities by the government led by Laura Chinchilla (2010-2014). In March 2014 OAS agreed to US$35m in compensation.

The legislature has also approved a US$395m loan from the China Harbour Engineering Company (CEHC) to fund the US$465m expansion of Costa Rica’s Route 32, the main highway connecting San José and the Caribbean province of Limón, with the remaining US$70m to be funded by the government.

Finally, a US$1bn contract for a new terminal at the Puerto Limón/Moín complex, awarded in 2011 to the Dutch firm, APM Terminals, is also going ahead after clearing legal hurdles. On 18 February, the national council for concessions (CNC) confirmed that the company had all the necessary permits to begin work.

EL SALVADOR | Remittances bounce. The estimated 2.5m Salvadoreans living in the US, both illegally and legally, sent home over US$4bn in remittances for the first time in 2014. The growth trend continued in January, with inflows up 2.7% year on year, according to El Salvador’s central bank, which noted that unemployment among Latinos in the US dropped to 6.5% at end-2014, down from 8.3% at end-2013.

The inflows are a key source of liquidity to dollarised El Salvador.

• Regional remittances

The rebound in remittances is regional. Last year remittances to Guatemala rose by 8.6%, while flows to Honduras grew by 11%. Meanwhile transfers to Mexico, which has the most migrants working in the US, were up 7.8%.

ECUADOR | Recortan el pronóstico del PIB para el 2015. Admitiendo que la economía “se está desacelerando” y “creciendo a una tasa menor a la que estamos acostumbrados”, el Banco Central de Ecuador (BCE) ha recortado su pronostico anual real del PIB para el 2015, a sólo 1,9%, de un pronóstico original del 4,1%, a medida que la caída de cerca del 50% en las ganancias por la exportación de petróleo ha dejado a la economía interna vacilante.

Con los ingresos petroleros alimentando el gasto público que creció exponencialmente bajo el gobierno de Izquierda liderado por el Presidente Rafael Correa, hasta representar un masivo 44% del PIB en el 2014, la súbita caída en los ingresos petroleros ha impactado a toda la economía.

Al anunciar el revisado pronóstico del PIB, que ahora está basado en un precio promedio del barril de petróleo de US$45 por barril (/b), de US$79,7/b anteriormente, Mateo Villalba, el gerente general del BCE, se concentró en lo positivo, señalando que la inflación en la economía dolarizada sería baja este año. En el 2014, Ecuador registró un crecimiento real del PIB del 3,8% y una inflación del 3,7%.

El gobierno ha tomado una serie de medidas en un esfuerzo por apuntalar sus finanzas, comenzando con un paquete fiscal de emergencia en noviembre del 2014 y seguido a partir de ahí por la imposición de una ‘salvaguarda en la balanza de pagos’ en marzo. También ha ubicado US$3,5mm en bonos internacionales de alto rendimiento desde enero, sugiriendo fuertemente que hay tensiones fiscales.

Los préstamos chino por valor de unos US$4mm, anunciado con gran fanfarria por el Presidente Correa en enero, parece estar entrando a cuenta gotas, pero muy lentamente, y en cantidades tan pequeñas que no hacen mucha diferencia (si bien gran parte de los préstamos son, en todo caso vinculados a proyectos de infraestructura existentes).

Las últimas medidas del gobierno de Quito –nuevas medidas impositivas a las herencias y ganancias de capital– han provocado considerables protestas públicas en los últimos días y muchas críticas de la dispar oposición política, que aprovecha cualquiera y todas las oportunidades para golpear a Correa y lo que describen como su micro-manejo y sus tendencias autocráticas.

Con Correa fuera del país para asistir a la cumbre Unión Europea- Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (UE-Celac) en Bruselas, Bélgica, y con la tensión creciendo, el Vicepresidente Jorge Glass mantuvo una reunión el 10 de junio con el gabinete y los legisladores de la gobernante Alianza País (AP) para analizar la situación. El resultado fue predecible; la AP acusó a la oposición de tratar de desestabilizar el país y convocó a contra-demostraciones en Quito y otras partes, lo que no hará mucho para aliviar las tensiones.

• Polarización en Ecuador

Los cantos de ‘Fuera Correa’ por manifestantes anti-gobierno en Ecuador fueron replicados con gritos de ‘Uh, ah, Correa no se va’  por parte de sus seguidores, indicando la creciente polarización política en el país. Esto ha sido intensificado por las medidas del congreso nacional de levantar la prohibición sobre la reelección antes de las elecciones generales del 2017, que podrían permitirle al Presidente Rafael Correa competir por un cuarto mandato consecutivo.

On 27 January residents of La Rioja province kicked off a year in which there will be at least 15 electoral Sundays, and probably more. The starting point was a little inauspicious – a controversial provincial referendum which is being challenged in the courts. Ahead lie an assortment of primaries, provincial, and then presidential elections due in October. Politicians have sought to gain tactical advantage through the timing of the polls.

Ten years ago, Argentina approved a federal law introducing obligatory, simultaneous and open primary elections (Paso). The idea was that they would be held on the same Sunday across the country a few months before general election. In a general election year, citizens might therefore have to vote on at least three Sundays: once in the primaries, once in the general election itself, and potentially a third time in the event of a second-round run-off presidential ballot being necessary.

But over the last few years and for a variety of reasons, many provinces, which hold the constitutional right to select their own dates, have moved their primaries and principal elections around. The end result is that someone, somewhere in Argentina, will be voting on something on at least 15 different Sundays in 2019. The ‘simultaneous’ primaries have therefore turned out to be anything but. Some provinces have also chosen to make their primaries non-obligatory.

This year’s electoral starting point was an ill-tempered referendum in the small province of La Rioja (home to about 1% of the national electorate). Incumbent governor Sergio Casas of the Partido Justicialista (PJ, Peronists) sought, and according to his supporters obtained, backing to change the provincial constitution to allow him to stand for re-election later this year. Roughly 60% of those who voted indeed favoured changing the constitution, according to provisional results. In terms of registered voters, however, the result was 25.27% to 17.90% in favour of amending the constitution. The centre-right Cambiemos opposition (aligned with the federal government) argues that the provincial constitution requires at least 35% of the registered electorate (rather than of the actual voters) to back the change.

• La Rioja elections

The supreme court had turned down a Cambiemos attempt to postpone the elections in La Rioja; now it may again be called on to rule on the meaning of the referendum results. Federal justice minister Germán Garavano described the poll as “manipulated” and controversial, and claimed it had a negative impact on Argentina’s democracy.

Next up will be (non-obligatory) primaries in La Pampa province on 17 February. Here the PJ has a single candidate (Sergio Zilioto) while Cambiemos has yet to choose between rival candidates from President Mauricio Macri’s Propuesta Republicana (PRO) and the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR). On 10 March, Neuquén province will hold elections including the choice of provincial legislators and the governor. This is likely to be a three-way fight. Incumbent Governor Omar Gutiérrez, of the local Movimiento Popular Neuquino (MPN), which has dominated the province for more than half a century, will seek re-election, contested by the PJ and Cambiemos. On 31 March, San Juan province will hold primaries.

On 7 April there will be primaries in Chubut province, while on the same day in Rio Negro there will be legislative and gubernatorial elections. On 14 April come primaries in Entre Ríos, on 21 April there will be (non-obligatory) primaries in San Luis (a province marked by a bitter quarrel between governor Alberto Rodríguez Sáa and his brother Adolfo). On 12 May there will be gubernatorial elections in Córdoba, important because it is the country’s second-largest electoral district, followed on 19 May by gubernatorial elections in La Pampa. The electoral dates will continue to come thick and fast in the second half of this year. In all, they are expected to spread out to cover more than 15 Sundays, since some provinces (including Misiones, Tucumán, Chaco, and Catamarca) have yet to fix their dates.

The timing of these elections has a lot to do with political tactics. When most of the primaries were held on the same Sunday (as happened in 2015) the vote gave an immediate and fairly comprehensive snapshot of the strengths and weaknesses of the national parties. With not only the primaries but also the main provincial elections spread out across the year, the national trend becomes blurred and more difficult to call. A potentially confusing mix of opinion polls, primary results, and early provincial elections will be used to measure party strength. It is possible that the desire to spin a positive message and create a national ‘bandwagon’ effect has convinced some provinces to schedule their elections earlier. Also relevant: if the government’s hoped-for ‘green shoots’ of economic recovery do not emerge until later this year, the opposition may do better in those polls held in the early part of the year.

The ruling Cambiemos coalition has taken the decision not to bring forward the Buenos Aires gubernatorial election from 27 October. There was a persuasive argument for Governor María Eugenia Vidal to bring the election forward. She has been a popular governor in a province traditionally seen as a PJ stronghold. She might have done better to take a degree of distance from the national government’s unpopular economic performance. On the other hand, delivering a victory in the province ahead of the presidential election could have been seen as the perfect way to build momentum for the re-election of Cambiemos at a national level.

• Cambiemos jewels

The outcome of the contest for the three electoral ‘jewels’ in the Cambiemos crown could be settled on the same day, 27 October: the national presidency; the governorship of Buenos Aires (the country’s largest single electoral constituency), currently held by María Eugenia Vidal, and the mayoralty of the city of Buenos Aires, currently held by Enrique Rodríguez Larreta. Two of the three will definitely be settled on 27 October; the presidency, of course, might go to a second-round run-off in November.

It might also have given the PJ less traction by splitting the provincial contest away from the presidential race where former president Cristina Fernández (2007-2015) is expected to be a candidate. However, Vidal is reported to have ruled out an earlier poll based on what she called electoral “speculations”. Macri himself is also said to have opposed holding too many elections on separate days (which he says are confusing and costly in budget terms) and to have argued that bringing the Buenos Aires race forward could have been seen as a sign of weakness.

The Cristina factor

Broadly speaking, analysts are still expecting a three-way political split in this election year, with voters choosing between the centre-right Cambiemos coalition, some sort of centrist Peronist option, and the populist-left represented by former president Cristina Fernández. One of the key questions is whether Fernández, facing multiple corruption charges dating back to her time in government, is discredited and out of touch with the voters, or on the contrary, able to pose a renewed and refreshed challenge to the Macri government. News of a poll by Elypsis, conducted in January as the government was announcing unpopular utility tariff increases, has caused alarm in government and investor circles: it suggests Fernández is definitely once-more becoming politically competitive.

The poll shows her approval rating growing to 36%, pushing her up above María Eugenia Vidal (35%), anti-corruption campaigner and federal deputy Elisa Carrió (30%), and Peronist economist Roberto Lavagna (28%). President Macri’s approval rating had dropped nine percentage points on the previous month to languish in fifth position with 24%. That put him ahead only of Peronists Juan Manuel Urtubey (governor of Salta) and Sergio Massa (who has formally declared he will make a bid for the presidency). The poll suggests that the economic crisis has reduced support for both Vidal – who had the highest approval rating during most of 2018 – and Macri.

The Elypsis poll does come with a health warning, however: it was a telephone survey carried out in the middle of the summer holiday season, meaning that with many people away, the sample of respondents may have been less representative.

Cuba has suffered four major power cuts in the last two weeks, serving to again highlight the precarious energy situation facing the island state whose entire grid was knocked out by Hurricane Ian in late September [WR-22-41]. Ahead of Hurricane Ian, blackouts were already an increasingly regular occurrence in Cuba, as a result of crumbling infrastructure, and had previously ignited protests [WR-22-41]. The latest outages come amid other worrying economic indicators for the Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC) government.

On 21 February Cuba’s state electricity company Unión Eléctrica (UNE) said that over half of Cuba’s 15 provinces were facing energy blackouts, from the central province of Cienfuegos to the easternmost province of Guantánamo, due to faults in two major transmission lines, which UNE technical director Lázaro Guerra said were caused by forest fires.

• Fires

On 25 February government-aligned media Cubadebate cited preliminary figures showing that some 1,200 hectares (ha) of forest had been destroyed by wildfires. Fires, which began in the mountains of Pinares de Mayari in Holguín province on 18 February, remain active. According to Cuba’s corps of forest rangers (CGB), there were a record 80 wildfires in January, attributed to prolonged drought which has been afflicting the island for months. Pinar del Río and Artemisa, in the western zone, and Holguín and Camagüey, in the central-eastern part of the country, were the most affected areas.

Five days earlier, the energy & mines minister, Vicente de la O Levy, warned that rolling blackouts, which had eased in December/January as lower temperatures meant less use of fans and air conditioners and a fall in electricity consumption, would resume and continue until May. He said this would be necessary in order for maintenance work to be carried out on thermoelectric plants.

The government has announced immediate fixes, such as a new floating power plant from Turkish energy company Karadeniz Holding, which arrived at the start of February and will add 240MW to the national electricity system. This is the eighth such floating plant received amid Cuba’s efforts to strengthen its power grid.

However, significant investment is considered necessary to overhaul the system; on 16 February O Levy reported that some US$250m a year would be required merely to keep the power grid functioning, while Jorge Piñon, a senior research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute, told the Spanish newswire EFE in a report published last month that overhauling Cuba’s electricity system would cost some US$10bn – funds which the country does not have.

While tourism is showing signs of picking up [WR-23-07], other key sectors like sugar, which state-owned sugar firm Azcuba declared was in a state of crisis in May 2022, are yet to follow. On 20 February Ángel Luis Ríos Riquenes, an Azcuba representative, warned that, so far, Cuba’s sugar harvest for 2022-2023 was 95,000 tonnes (t) short of the forecasted amount of 455,198t.

Ríos Riquenes blamed breakdowns at sugar mills, and shortages of fuel, equipment, and machinery which he said was linked to difficulties of finance and the economic embargo placed on Cuba by the US. Cuba’s sugar harvest in the 2021-2022 season came in at 474,000t, almost half the preceding season’s 800,000t, and just 52% of the official target.

In some ways Brazil’s economy did quite well in 2024. At around 3.3% growth, the economy expanded at more than twice the pace that economists had projected at the beginning of the year, and unemployment fell to the lowest level in over a decade. The problem is that many economists and investors fear the country’s progress isn’t sustainable and that it is living above its means by spending money the government doesn’t have. 

The budget deficit of the public sector in the 12 months through November again crept higher, to 9.5% of GDP, the central bank said on 30 December. That’s more than double what it was when President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office two years ago and one of the highest deficits on record.

Levels of confidence in the Brazilian economy have plummeted. The government had to pay local investors nearly 15% to buy a 10-year bond, compared with 5.8% for the equivalent in Chile and 2.4% in Germany. That is the highest yield the government has had to pay since the impeachment of former President Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016) amid a deep economic crisis.

The national currency has also been hit hard. The real lost 21% in 2024, making it the worst-performing of 31 currencies tracked by Bloomberg. On Christmas Day in 2023 the real stood at R$4.79 against the US dollar; a year later it had sunk to nearly R$6.20/US$1. The central bank, which has had a relatively hands-off approach in the currency market, intervened heavily in the final weeks of the year and sold over US$20bn of international reserves to try and prop up the real.  

At the heart of the problem is that Lula is borrowing money to fund his government, meaning public debt keeps on growing – and with it the share of the budget eaten up by interest payments. In a country that needs huge investments in education, health, infrastructure, and more, close to half of the government’s annual budget goes to service debt accumulated over the years.

When the Lula administration finally announced a plan to cut back spending in late November, it was perceived as underwhelming and then was watered down even more in congress in December, contributing to the freefall of the real.  

To be fair, other issues have weighed on the Brazilian currency as well, including a strong US dollar and the threat of protectionist tariffs hitting Brazilian exports. “The balance of risks for the Brazilian economy has worsened recently. In addition to global factors, fiscal imbalances have become an increasing source of concern, despite the recent measures proposed by the government,” the Spanish bank BBVA said in a December research note. “If left unaddressed, they could lead to a more negative macroeconomic scenario.”

But the result is the same. Deficitary spending and a weaker currency are bad news for inflation and, as a result, the central bank has already hiked interest rates by 75 basis points since September. It is likely to raise rates by at least another 50. And with that Brazil’s economic growth this year will again fall in line with its capacity, an expansion of around 2%.

The remedy – a credible fiscal policy that caps public debt – is simple economically but difficult politically. But Lula could be convinced to adopt belt tightening measures if the alternative of doing nothing proved more costly – which may already have become the case. According to a Datafolha poll published on 31 December, 61% of people polled consider the Brazilian economy to be on the wrong track.

As an innovative, high-tech company, aircraft manufacturer Embraer has long been one of Brazil’s poster-child exporters. Recently it has again been in the limelight, both for its stellar performance as well as for the risk of US import tariffs that would have threatened much of its business.

The São José dos Campos-based firm that specialised in regional aviation has staged a remarkable recovery over the past few years, following turbulent times during the aviation sector slump resulting from the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and the collapse of a planned partnership with US aircraft manufacturer Boeing in 2020. Since then, annual revenue has been on an upward trend, and in 2024 reached its highest level ever at US$6.4bn, a 21% increase year-over-year. With 203 commercial and business jets delivered last year, it was the first of the major aircraft manufacturers worldwide to surpass pre-Covid delivery levels according to Air Current, an aviation news outlet.

Part of Embraer’s success has been its continued investment into new product development in niche markets. In 2019 it delivered the first C-390 military transport plane and in 2023 it began producing the Gripen E in partnership with Swedish manufacturer Saab, making Brazil one of the few countries in the world to build supersonic jet fighters.

Early indications are that 2025 could bring further growth for the company. The Brazilian firm delivered 61 aircraft in the second quarter of 2025, a 30% increase from a year earlier. It expects to deliver between 77 and 85 commercial planes and between 145 and 155 executive jets for the full year, an increase of 10% and 15% respectively over the previous year.

Fuelling optimism for the near future was a US$4bn order by the multinational Scandinavian airline SAS for up to 55 units of the E195-E2 aircraft, the biggest order for the carrier in nearly three decades and one of the biggest for Embraer. All that has bolstered Embraer’s value enormously. Shares surged more than 150% in 2024 and gained over 40% in the first half of the year to a record high.

And yet the past months have also exposed some of the fragilities of the world's third largest planemaker, after Airbus and Boeing. The threat of imposing tariffs on all Brazilian goods by US President Donald Trump highlighted just how much the aircraft manufacturer relies on the US market. Around 60% of its revenue comes from clients in the world’s largest economy. Embraer CEO Francisco Gomes Neto told Bloomberg that there was “no way to reallocate the US customers’ orders to other markets” in the short term.

Embraer already has a manufacturing plant in Florida but that only assembles its business jets, meaning all other aircraft would be exposed to an almost insurmountable trade barrier. “The company is considering an increase of its output in the US unit as an alternative, but it requires time and investments and will not be available for the company’s entire portfolio,” Neto said before the US administration included airplanes among the nearly 700 tariff exemptions.

Even if the immediate application of a 50% tariff appears to have been avoided, the unpredictability of President Trump’s trade policy may mean Embraer will continue to reassess its production sites and distribution. But with Brazilian politicians, particularly President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, concerned about losing jobs abroad ahead of general elections in 2026, that could prove a challenging task. Embraer’s geopolitical balancing act may be just beginning.

Success story

Born as a state-owned enterprise focused on aircraft for the country’s air force, Embraer is one of only a few examples of Brazilian companies whose privatisation, backed by proper public policies, produced world-class companies that generate jobs, national pride, and foreign currency. Another is the Brazilian mining giant Vale, which had been troubled by corruption and nepotism but emerged as a global mining company after its privatisation.

At the end of August, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Panama joined forces in Panama City to try and halt the spread of New World screwworm (NWS), which occurs when NWS fly larvae (Cochliomyia hominivorax) infest the flesh of living mammals – primarily cattle but also other domestic and wild species, including human beings. Eradicated from Central America in the early 2000s, the disease re-emerged in Panama in 2023, and has since been reported in the rest of the sub-region with “direct repercussions on food safety, the rural economy and community well-being”, according to the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), which hosted the event.

According to an IICA statement, for the first time, on 28 August ministries of agriculture and health, the private sector, and technical specialists from the IICA, the Panama-US Commission for the Eradication and Prevention of Screwworm (Copeg), and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Central America came together to establish “a pioneering model of intersectoral collaboration for animal health and public health”.

The event is the latest sign of efforts to control the outbreak after NWS detections in Panama exploded in 2023 from an average of 25 cases per year to over 6,500 cases in one year. Until June 2023, Panama was considered the biological barrier against NWS for the rest of Central and North America. In 1998 Copeg, an international US-Panama mission for the control of NWS, began eradication efforts in Panama through the sterile insect technique. This involves the rearing and release of sterile male flies which, when mated with wild females, produce no offspring, thereby reducing the fly population in infested areas. In 2006 a sterile fly production plant was inaugurated in the town of Pacora, Panamá province, which dispersed flies from Bayano Lake, a reservoir in Panamá province, to 20 nautical miles into Colombia.

A 5 September article by US-based American Society for Microbiology, a professional organisation for scientists who study viruses, highlights that the resurgence in Panama of the disease occurred when “the flies suddenly overpowered the insect barrier and the difficult terrain of the Darien Gap at the southern tip of Panama.” It states that the exact cause of this breach is unclear but is most likely due to multiple factors, including interruptions in the production of sterile flies as a result of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, illegal cattle imports, “as well as the challenges involved in surveillance of the Gap’s difficult geography”.

With Costa Rica identifying its first case of NWS in 2023, and Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and El Salvador following suit in 2024, national emergencies have been declared across the sub-region in response to NWS. A 14 August report by Italy-headquartered news agency Inter Press Service (IPS) cites figures from the El Salvador-based regional agricultural health organisation (Oirsa) as estimating that as of the start of July, some 99,000 NWS cases had been registered in Central America, mainly in cattle.

As well as the use of sterile flies, efforts to curb the spread of NWS include strategies of prevention, control, and training. The government of the US, where the first human case of NWS in decades was registered on 4 August in a person who had travelled from El Salvador, has also stepped up its response. In June, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced a five-pronged plan to eliminate NWS. Among other things, this includes US$21m in funds to renovate an existing fruit fly production facility in Mexico’s Metapa de Domínguez municipality, Chiapas state, which will provide an additional 60-100m sterile flies a week to stop the spread, on top of the more than 100m already produced in Panama.  However, Oirsa’s regional NWS coordinator Marcela Marchelli has been cited by the regional media as saying that it could take between 10 and 12 years to eradicate the pest in Central America.

Cost

In October 2024 Central American business magazine Revista Estrategia y Negocios cited José Loaiza, a researcher at Panama’s state university, Universidad de Panamá, as citing scientific studies which estimate that annual economic losses from NWS could total over US$150m in Central America.

Cattle trafficking

A November 2024 report by US non-profit Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) highlights studies by specialists at Mexico’s Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Unam) which suggest that cattle smuggling may be accelerating the spread of NWS.

It cites Alejandro Zaldivar Gómez, a Unam researcher, as saying that the findings of a new report indicate that NWS has been spreading across Central America at an average rate of 1.6km per day. According to Zaldivar Gómez, this spread rate “allows us to project its geographic reach over the short and medium term, offering critical data for designing surveillance and control strategies in high-risk areas”. The WCS report cites Zaldivar Gómez as saying that in recent months, “the spread has accelerated significantly”, with new outbreaks reported up to 300km away from previous infection points. It says that “these long-distance movements provide further evidence that illegal cattle trafficking is likely fuelling the fly’s expansion through Central America”, noting that this claim has been backed by regional health authorities. It highlights official inspection documents from Honduras and Nicaragua, published by the World Animal Health Information System (Wahis), which collects and publishes information gathered by individual countries’ veterinary services, which outline how the parasite has entered these countries via smuggled cattle.

The big political beneficiary of the three months of protests is an independent politician currently outside congress, Marco Enríquez-Ominami. Enríquez-Ominami, a former socialist deputy, ran for the presidency in 2009 and claims that both the left-of-centre Concertación (which ruled Chile from 1990  to 2010) and the current right-wing government led by President Sebastián Piñera are much the same.

What is striking from opinion polls is that the ratings of the government and the opposition alike are very low. On 4 August the Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP) poll, which takes six monthly readings, put President Piñera’s support at just 26%, the lowest for any president since the country’s return to democracy in 1990. His rejection rate was also at a post-1990 record high of 52%.

In December 2010, the CEP put Piñera’s support at 44% and his disapproval at 36%. It is worth noting, however, that public support for Piñera’s education policy appears to have risen, going from from 38% at the end of 2010 to 44%. However respondents’ evaluation of the government’s implementation of its education policies has fallen, from 32% support at the end of 2010 to 10% support now.

Curiously, 46% of those polled by the CEP disapprove of the Concertación and only 17% approve, while 25% are neutral and 12% don’t know or don’t care. In Santiago, support for the Concertación is running at just 9%, while disapproval is now up to 53%.

• Same sex civil unions
  In early August President Piñera sent a bill to congress to recognise same-sex civil unions. The bill puts opposite-sex and same-sex couples on the same footing, Piñera said, adding provocatively, “there is no such thing as one type of family; there are multiple forms and expressions of family.” The fact that the leaders of both Unión Demócrata Independiente and Renovación Nacional boycotted the launch of the bill indicates that the Right is not happy. Piñera attempted to placate his base by insisting that this bill will not be the prelude to the recognition of gay marriage.

Illegal migration: The number of illegal immigrants arrested at the US-Mexico border has fallen dramatically this year and could be at a 40-year low by the end of this fiscal year (30 September), according to figures released by the US border patrol. Officials say that at some sections of the border (El Paso, Yuma and San Diego, for example) 90% of potential immigrants are arrested, whilst in others, such as Tucson, the arrest rate is approximately 70%. This would indicate that the arrest rate provides a closer estimate of the total number of illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border than in previous years, when the percentage of arrests made was lower. Fewer Latin Americans are making the journey to the US border because of the economic crisis in the US. The number of illegal immigrants who die whilst trying to reach the US has not fallen, however, with 144 known deaths per 100,000 in 2011. This compares to 119 deaths in 2010 and 39 in 2004. A large number of immigrants die in the Arizona desert; particularly after the US erected high barriers along more accessible bits of the border.

Oil exploration: The US and Mexico have started talks about how to exploit oilfields that may straddle the border between the US and Mexico in the Gulf of Mexico. On 19 May, the presidents of Mexico and the US signed an agreement committing the two countries to agree on the exploitation of oil fields in the Gulf which either straddle the border or stretch into international waters. The two countries committed themselves not to drill for oil in the Polígonal Occidental, one of the most promising areas for oil, until after 2014.

• Papaya

Mexico’s agriculture ministry denies that there is any conclusive proof that Mexican papayas are responsible for an outbreak of salmonella in 23 US states. The ministry points out that inspection of papaya exports between May and August found no evidence of the bug. The US Food & Drug Administration found traces of salmonella in 33 of the 211 papayas it inspected. The papayas came from 28 different Mexican exporters.

• Remittances

Remittances inflows to Mexico came to US$1.89bn in July, up 1.4% year-on-year. The inflow was, however, down 6% month-on-month from June. Over the first seven months of 2011, total inflows were up 4% on the same period of 2010 at US$13.08bn.

India-China border talks scheduled for 28-29 November were cancelled by China because of the hosting of an international Buddhist conference in New Delhi to be addressed by the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader.

The cancelled border talks will be rescheduled, however China’s move to cancel the talks is an indicator of the ever-present potential for deterioration in India-China relations.  China had tried to insist that India prevent the Dalai Lama attending the conference, but India refused.

On 28 November, India’s Defence Minister AK Antony faced questioning in parliament about border issues. Thirty-two members of the Indian parliament raised the question of China’s build up of infrastructure in border regions.  Antony said: “Required measures are being undertaken to upgrade our capabilities to achieve the desired defence preparedness to safeguard sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of India.”  He also said that India was constructing strategic infrastructure “in the north-eastern region in areas close to the international border with China”.

On 23 November, India’s Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai told a conference at the National Defence College that India’s security interests extended from East Africa to the South China Sea and it would continue with exploration plans in the South China Sea despite Chinese objections.  He said: “India and China, as two large, growing economies with overlapping areas of interests are bound to cooperate and compete simultaneously.”

Commentators in search of a metaphor for Argentina’s government did not have to scratch their heads for too long this week. After listing to port for a few days, and after repeated assurances by the navy that the situation was under control, the ARA Santísima Trinidad, the destroyer which carried the first Argentine troops to the Falklands in 1982, finally sank at its berth in Puerto Belgrano. The culprit: a burst pipe, though the defence minister, Arturo Puricelli, did not rule out sabotage, noting the “striking” fact this episode happened so quickly after the liberation of the Libertad frigate.

Taking on water

While President Cristina Fernández waxed nostalgic over the anti-imperialist battles of yesteryear in Vietnam (see box), the government at home became bogged down in collective bargaining talks with the unions. An apparent deal with the bank clerks’ union for a 24% pay increase started to unravel during talks at the labour ministry early this week. The government is trying to limit pay increases to 20%, but even loyal unions are demanding a floor of 25%, plus an increase in the income tax threshold. The most reliable estimates put inflation for 2012 at just over 25%.

Most worrying for the government is the convergence of interests between the normally divided factions of the Confederaciόn General del Trabajo (CGT). Both support linking wage increases to a rise in the income tax threshold; giving the unions the power to disperse money from the government’s Social Redistribution Fund; and raising taxes on financial transactions and mining. Guillermo Pereya, from the dissident CGT, is due to hold a meeting with the leader of the government-supporting CGT, Antonio Caló, in mid February.

The dissident CGT said it was considering up to four national strikes in 2013 if the government fails to heed its demands for a 25% pay increase. It is already planning a demonstration in front of congress at the beginning of March to present a petition calling for the standardisation of family benefits. To ensure the protests do not become too large, the government will be hoping that talks between the two sides of the CGT do not result in an outbreak of brotherly love.

BOX: Fernández abroad

Certainly the photographic highlight of the President Fernández’s trip to Cuba, the Middle East and Asia, was the image of her camouflaged floppy hat emerging from the tunnels used by the Vietcong during the Vietnam war. Other than engaging in anti-imperialist nostalgia, the trip’s primary purpose was to reinforce the government’s south-south diplomacy.

In the United Arab Emirates, Fernández signed deals relating to nuclear energy, air transport, fisheries, livestock and peaceful space exploration. Argentina has three nuclear reactors; one in Buenos Aires and one in Cόrdoba with a third, also in Buenos Aires, due to open in June. In Indonesia, the president thanked the Indonesian people for their continued support of the Argentine position over the Falklands/Malvinas dispute, suggesting that it benefited both nations to “reformulate the rules of the game for multilateral organisations”. On the final leg of her tour, to Vietnam, she discussed biotechnology, nuclear and agriculture deals.

Around 200 business leaders from the textile, footwear, grains and construction industries (among others) accompanied the president and the foreign trade secretary, Beatriz Paglieri, on her tour. It is unclear that they had many trading opportunities to offer in return to foreign buyers. Argentine imports continue to decline precipitously, by 7% in 2012, thanks to the government imposition of tough new import rules in February last year in order to bolster the trade surplus and safeguard currency reserves. Argentina’s trade surplus expanded by 27% in 2012 to US$12.69bn.

Sidebar: Bariloche mayor out

On 18 January the mayor of Bariloche, Omar Goye, was suspended from his position on the council after being held responsible for the looting that took place in the city at the end of December. Goye stands accused of paying off the union

-China displaced Brazil as Bolivia’s main source of imports for first time in 2014, according to official figures.

-Colombia’s Avianca places US$10.6m order for 100 new Airbus A320 aircraft, the largest ever order by a Latin American airline.

Argentina se encontró involucrada la semana pasada en dos disputas bastante diferentes sobre la soberanía nacional: en la primera, la familiar disputa territorial en el Atlántico Sur con el Reino Unido sobre las islas Malvinas/Falklands, una jueza local buscó congelar los activos de compañías petroleras. En la segunda, los partidos de la oposición cuestionaron los términos de un acuerdo permitiendo a China construir una estación de observación espacial en la Patagonia.

La jueza con sede en Tierra del Fuego, Lilian Herráez, ordenó el congelamiento de los activos de cinco compañías petroleras foráneas, sobre la base de que ellas estaban operando sin autorización en aguas cercanas a la costa alrededor de las islas Malvinas, como son conocidas en la Argentina. Las cinco compañías son: Premier Oil; Rockhopper Exploration; y Falkland Oil and Gas (todas registradas en el Reino Unido); Noble Energy (EU) y Edison S.p.A. (Italia).

La orden de la corte busca congelar las cuentas bancarias, buques, y otros activos por un valor estimado en US$156m. Como ninguna de las compañías tiene operaciones en Argentina, la movida luce grandemente simbólica: teóricamente Argentina podría continuar la acción a través de las cortes internacionales, pero esto involucraría un largo y costoso proceso con un resultado incierto. A pesar de esto, el canciller de Argentina, Héctor Timerman, dijo que él pediría formalmente a los reguladores de las bolsas de valores de Londres y Nueva York que implementen la orden.

Algo de petróleo ha sido descubierto por estas compañías, pero todavía no se conoce si los depósitos son lo suficientemente grandes como para justificar su desarrollo comercial a gran escala (o de hecho, que arreglos serían necesarios hacer para poder embarcar cualquier petróleo y gas sin el apoyo de la tierra firme argentina).

Ninguna de las compañías ha comentado sobre el congelamiento, y la noticia solo ha provocado una “moderada turbulencia” en los precios de sus acciones. Un asesor de Premier Oil fue citado como diciendo: “Creo que esta es la quinta vez en 15 meses que ellos han hecho amenazas […] es solamente ruido político”. El canciller británico, Philip Hammond, llamó a la movida “una escandalosa forma de amedrentamiento”.

La estación de observación espacial china

Mientras tanto, la decisión del gobierno de Argentina de permitirle a China la construcción de una estación de observación espacial en la provincia patagónica de Neuquén continúa atrayendo la crítica interna. Públicamente, el gobierno ha dicho que el acuerdo, firmado por la Presidenta Cristina Fernández y su par de China, Xi Jinping, el pasado febrero, involucra la cesión de un sitio de 200 hectáreas en Bajada del Agrio a unos 50kms de la frontera con Chile, donde una estación de rastreo espacial de US$50m está siendo construida. La estación ha recibido una exención fiscal por 50 años, y será operada por una compañía llamada China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control General (CLTC).

El periodista investigativo de televisión, Jorge Lanata, trató de visitar el sitio, pero dijo que él fue sido rechazado por funcionarios chinos quienes le dijeron que el área era “territorio chino”. Lanata afirmó que las tareas en el sitio comenzaron al menos un año antes que el tratado fuera firmado, y que el tratado tenía “cláusulas secretas”. En su programa de TV, Periodismo para Todos (PPT), Lanata entrevistó a un experto en seguridad, Ricardo Runza, quien dijo que el sitio estaba siendo conducido por una “agencia paramilitar” china y que la misma era “una base con objetivos fundamentalmente militares […] estamos ante una cuasi concesión de la soberanía de Argentina a un poder extranjero”.

El gobierno ha negado airadamente estas afirmaciones, con la oficina de Fernández describiendo las afirmaciones de Lanata como “falaces y mal intencionadas”. Los funcionarios dijeron que la estación tiene “objetivos exclusivamente científicos y civiles” y que “no existen cláusulas secretas o reservadas” en el acuerdo.

• Compañías petroleras en las Malvinas/Falkland

Las cinco compañías que operan en las aguas de las islas Malvinas/Falklands tienen licencias de las autoridades de las Falklands: el Reino Unido ocupa las islas y reclama su soberanía. Desde  el conflicto militar en 1982, cuando las fuerzas argentinas ocuparon las islas sólo para ser desalojadas por una fuerza de tareas británica, sucesivos gobiernos en ambos lados han mantenido sus mutuamente incompatibles reclamos de soberanía.

• La oposición reacciona ante estación espacial china

A través de Twitter, el Senador Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas, del partido opositor de Izquierda argentino de Proyecto Sur, dijo que “el acuerdo con China [sobre una estación espacial en la Patagonia] puede exponer a la Argentina a riesgos geoestratégicos en un ambiente internacional inestable”.

President Cristina Fernández used her final address as head of state to the United Nations General Assembly to accuse the US of protecting Jaime Stiuso, a former Argentine spy chief, wanted for questioning over the mysterious death of the federal prosecutor, Alberto Nisman. “Is he here?” Fernández asked the assembly, as her speech ran over the allotted timeframe. Some reports claim that Stiuso, who served in the Argentine intelligence service from 1972 until his dismissal in late 2014, has fled to the US. Stiuso is believed to be one of the main sources in Nisman’s investigation of the bombing of the Jewish community centre (Amia) in Buenos Aires in 1994, which left 85 people dead and hundreds injured.

Earlier in the year, Stiuso failed to appear before the current director of the intelligence secretariat, Oscar Parilli. Parilli had requested Stiuso explain his relationship to Nisman and his actions in the Amia case. Stiuso’s lawyers confirmed that he had deliberately chosen to remain outside of the country.

President Fernández has previously stated publicly that Stiuso was involved in a plot to accuse her government of involvement in covering-up Iran’s involvement in the bombing. Evidence produced by Parilli showed Nisman and Stiuso had been in regular contact in the weeks leading up to the prosecutor’s death.

A day after Fernández’s speech, the Argentine foreign ministry published more details about its repeated requests for information from the US government. The  US State Department responded to each request anonymously, referring all questions to possible charges against Stiuso back to the Argentine government. In a note, the Argentine foreign ministry said that “each and every one of our requests was made publicly, with the signature of whomever was responsible, and without hiding or lying about the reason for those requests. We expect similar treatment from the US authorities.”

The Argentine foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, and Parilli met the US ambassador, Noah Mamet, in July to explain their motives for seeking Stiuso: that under Argentine law, the former intelligence agent was obliged to present himself each time he was summoned by the authorities. According to the Argentine government, Mamet promised to give a reply, but has so far failed to do so.

In early September, the Argentine ambassador to the US, Cecilia Nahón, held a meeting with an officer of the State Department, Alex Lee, to reiterate the request. Lee apparently responded to the request by mentioning “the murder of Alberto Nisman” but then corrected himself by saying he had no opinion on the circumstances of Nisman’s death.

• New opinion polls put Scioli close

Three new opinion polls published in the Argentina media over the weekend showed that Daniel Scioli, the presidential candidate for the ruling Frente para la Victoria (FPV) faction of the Partido Justicialista (PJ, Peronists) has a lead of 10 percentage points over his nearest rival, Mauricio Macri. To win outright in the first round on 25 October, a presidential candidate needs either 45% of the vote or 40% with a 10-percentage-point advantage over his nearest rival.

All three polls published this weekend showed Scioli with over 40% of voter intentions and with a 10-point lead over Macri. However, the lead is still well within the polls’ margin of error. Meanwhile, only one of the polls shows Sergio Massa, the third-placed candidate, challenging Macri for a possible place in the run-off. For the Haime consultancy, Scioli is on 40.5%; Macri, from the centre-right Cambiemos coalition, on 30.2%; and Massa, from Una Nueva Alternativa (UNA), is on 15.7%. Rouvier, another polling company, has similar figures as regards the top two candidates, with Scioli on 41.2% and Macri on 31.1%; Massa has around 20%.For Aresco, Scioli leads with 41.4%, and Macri has 28.5% while Massa has 21%.  Interestingly all three consultancies found that 60% of Argentines believe that, regardless of their personal opinions, Scioli will be the winner.

• Election readiness

On 28 September, Alberto Dalla Via, the vice-president of Argentina’s top electoral court (CNE), said that some provinces were not ready to hold elections. Dalla Via decried the low level of institutionality and “feudal tendencies” of Catamarca, Formosa, La Rioja, Santa Cruz, Santiago del Estero and Tucumán. On the subject of the recent contentious election in Tucumán, Dalla Via said the province’s electoral system “leaves much to be desired”.

“Do you support the final accord to end the conflict and the construction of a stable and durable peace?” This will be the question to which Colombian voters will have to respond ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on 2 October when the referendum on the peace deal sealed last week between their government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) is held. On 29 August, Colombia’s lower chamber of congress and senate approved the staging of the referendum after receiving the accords from President Juan Manuel Santos four days earlier.

President Santos declared a definitive ceasefire on 25 August. This was reciprocated three days later from Cuba by the maximum leader of the Farc, ‘Timochenko’ (Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri), who ordered “every one of our combatants to cease hostilities definitively against the Colombian state”. Timochenko added: “Rivalries and resentment must remain in the past; today more than ever we regret so much death and grief because of the war; the war is over, let’s live together like brothers and sisters”.

The Farc’s 10^th conference, to discuss the peace and the guerrilla group’s future as a political party, will take place between 13 and 19 September in San Vicente del Caguán, the municipality in the southern department of Caquetá at the centre of the demilitarised zone created for the guerrillas during the failed peace process between the government of former president Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) and the Farc. Timochenko will later sign the accords with Santos.

Former president Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010), now a senator for the right-wing Centro Democrático (CD) orchestrating the ‘no’ campaign (which Pastrana is also behind), savaged the peace accord. Singling out several articles while waving a copy of the final accord in one hand, Uribe said it would “convert the Farc into a paramilitary group, at the service of the state”. He argued that the Farc had amassed enough illicit funds “to replace all the weapons it surrenders” and would be in a position “to buy votes”. Uribe insisted that “nothing justifies allowing Timochenko to be elected to the senate or even the presidency”. He also claimed that  “the impunity” being offered to the Farc “would never have been accepted for the paramilitaries” who demobilised under his government in 2006 even though the massacres they carried out “are no different”.

If ‘no’ triumphs, it will create enormous uncertainty, although it would not necessarily spell the end for the peace deal. The constitutional court established that the referendum would only be binding for Santos, which means that congress, where the ruling coalition has a thumping majority, could ride to the rescue, although it is not clear precisely how as Santos stressed that the final accord could not be revised.

• Semantic controversy

Former president Alvaro Uribe took issue with the question in the referendum selected by the government. The constitutional court had urged the government to create a “clear and precise” question for voters in the referendum that could not be confused. Uribe insisted the question should not contain the word ‘peace’ at all, as nobody was opposed to peace per se, and should be “neutral”, relating specifically to the accord reached in Cuba. 

The encouraging news that acute malnutrition fell by 9.1% last year to 12,138 cases, coupled with two anniversaries (the 21^st anniversary of the Guatemalan peace agreement in December and the second anniversary of the inauguration of Jimmy Morales as president in January) has led to various reviews of the current condition of the country’s indigenous communities. While there may be some signs of progress, the overall picture remains problematic.

Guatemala has one of the largest indigenous populations of any country in the Americas, and also suffers the greatest incidence of poverty and inequality: the two things are not unconnected. Activists claim that up to 60% of the country’s population of 17.25m people are indigenous. The highest income group tends to be the creoles (criollos - whites of European descent) who according to the 2010 census account for just under one-fifth of the population (18.5%). A total of 41% of the population is Ladino (mixed European and Amerindian ancestry), while 39% are full Amerindian.

Among the Amerindians, the main ethnic groups are the Mayas, and include the K’iche’ (11% of the total population), Q’eqchi, Kaqchikel, and Mam peoples. About 93% of the population speaks Spanish, but there are also 21 Mayan and two non-Mayan Amerindian languages spoken in the country. Meanwhile, official figures show that six out of ten Guatemalans (59.3%) live below the poverty line, while just over two out of ten (23.4%) suffer from acute poverty. About half the country’s children aged less than five years suffer from chronic malnutrition. The indigenous communities suffer disproportionately from poverty and malnutrition.

Keen to show that some progress is being made, the government highlighted the reduction in acute malnutrition. Germán González, head of the secretariat of food and nutritional security (Sesan), said that cases of acute malnutrition had fallen to a five-year low in 2017. In his state of the nation speech delivered on 14 January, the second anniversary of his inauguration, President Morales also highlighted the delivery of 26m lbs of food supplies to the poor, and the provisions of a new law which requires spending on school meals to more than double to Q3 (US$0.41) per pupil this year and to rise further to Q4 (US$0.54) in 2019. This could make a significant contribution, but there are doubts over the real strength of the government’s commitment to making lasting changes. Political wrangling over the budget in congress means the money for the extra school meals is not yet fully guaranteed. In January González announced he was resigning after six years as head of Sesan. He gave no reason for leaving but described himself as an “honest” person, leading to speculation that he may have been caught up in the political in-fighting over alleged corruption that has dogged the Morales government.

A civil-society lobby group, Observatorio Indígena de Guatemala (OIG), made clear it sees regression, rather than progress in the condition of the indigenous communities over the last two years. In a statement issued in January it recognised only some improvement in the battle against crime, since the homicide rate – still one of the highest in the world – has been falling. Otherwise, it said, it was deeply preoccupied over “the inefficiency, lack of knowledge, lack of clarity, lack of political will, and obscurity of vision” of President Morales. It described corruption as a “malign tumour” in society and accused the government and ruling party of doing little to combat it effectively. It said indigenous communities continued to be disadvantaged by shortages of medicine and poor education. School enrolment was falling in predominantly indigenous areas such as Huehuetenango, Totonicapán, Sololá, Quetzaltenango and Quiché: this, it suggested, was part of a “racist” approach by the government in office.

Politically, organisations such as the peasant development committee (Comité de Desarrollo Campesino – Codeca) seek to mobilise indigenous and rural workers in a radical campaign against the government. Codeca demonstrated in Guatemala City during the president’s state of the nation address. Its main demand is that Morales and all 158 members of congress should resign because, in its view, they are implicated in endemic corruption. It also accuses the president of ultimate responsibility for the death of 41 young girls in a fire at a hostel for poor children in March 2017 (investigations into that tragedy are ongoing).

A key aspect of the problem is that many of the peace agreements and undertakings that ended Guatemala’s long civil war in 1960-1996, which left a death toll of roughly 250,000 people, have never been fully implemented. Many indigenous communities supported the left-wing rebel groups, and many were targeted by the army’s ruthless counter-insurgency campaign. Marking 21 years since the peace agreements were signed on 29 December 1996, the key monitoring body, Consejo Nacional para el Cumplimiento de los Acuerdos de Paz (CNAP), noted a number of shortcomings. The budget for reparations has been cut back, and conflicts over land ownership continue (a total of 8,080 conflicts involving 3.47m people were registered in 1997-2016). Although Guatemala is a signatory to Convention 169 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which requires indigenous communities to be consulted before major extractive or hydroelectric projects are started, CNAP says the views of local communities have been ignored in a majority of cases.

• Agreements insufficient

A former guerrilla leader of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG) rebel group told EFE, the Spanish news agency, that the agreements had been insufficient to overcome what she described as poverty, inequality, racism and discrimination. While still defending the potential for development and social inclusion created by the peace agreement, she argued that the Morales administration had chosen to “support structures of corruption and impunity”.