All Categories

Date: 28 November.

Type: Presidential, legislative (128 national deputy candidates representing the country’s 18 departments), local (298 mayoral candidates), plus 20 candidates for the Central American parliament (Parlacen).

Main contenders (presidential pre-candidates): Mauricio Oliva, Nasry Asfura (Partido Nacional, PN); Yani Rosenthal, Luis Zelaya (Partido Liberal, PL); Salvador Nasralla (Partido Salvador de Honduras); Xiomara Castro (Partido Libertad y Refundación, Libre).

The end of Hernández

President Juan Orlando Hernández will not be seeking a third four-year term for the conservative PN which has been in office since 2009. His second term was already subject to question: the Honduran constitution explicitly prohibits presidential re-election but a 2015 controversial ruling by the supreme court lifted the ban, allowing him to run again. The previous 2017 election was also widely slammed as fraudulent, prompting observers from the Organization of American States (OAS) to question whether the official results, which gave Hernández a narrow 42.9%-41.4% victory over Nasralla (then running for the Alianza de Oposición contra la Dictadura coalition), accurately reflected the people’s will. Both major opposition parties, Libre and PL, challenged the results and mass protests occurred. Post-electoral violence resulted in at least 23 dead, at least 16 of whom were shot by security forces according to the Office of the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Such was the controversy that back in January 2019, the legislature approved a preliminary package of constitutional changes to partially reform the electoral process. These restructured the national registry office, dissolved the existing electoral authority, and created two new institutions: the CNE to organise and supervise electoral processes, and an electoral court of justice to settle electoral disputes. However, further legislation was pending which has not been approved . This means the institutional framework which gave rise to claims of massive fraud in 2017 has not been fully overhauled ahead of the election.

• Failure to approve further changes

Further legislation was pending, in line with recommendations from institutions such as the OAS and UN. As well as seeking to bolster the party system, with an emphasis on women’s equal access to elected positions, these included guaranteeing organised electoral processes and election days, with trained electoral officials, standardised polling stations, and transparent ballot processing.

The PN, which holds 61 of the 128 seats in congress, has been able to control the legislative agenda with the ad-hoc support of several small parties and has benefited from the fragmentation of the opposition - and specifically the PL which fell apart in the aftermath of the 2009 coup which ejected President Manuel Zelaya (PL, 2006-2009). Under the successive PN administrations, the country has seen a weakening of anti-corruption efforts, culminating in the ejection in January 2020 of the OAS-sponsored Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (Maccih) after four years in the country. The latest (January 2020) Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) by NGO Transparency International revealed Honduras slid 14 places in 2019 to rank 146 out of 180 countries, the second worse score in Central America after Nicaragua (161). In October 2019, a US court convicted Hernández’s brother, Juan Antonio, on four counts, which included conspiring to import cocaine into the US. The verdict caused some discomfort for the president given that the court found millions of US dollars of drug proceeds had been funnelled to PN electoral campaigns to “impact” on presidential elections in 2009, 2013, and 2017.

Corruption concerns similarly cloud the pre-presidential line-up ahead of the scheduled (but non-obligatory) March primaries to select the candidates – presidential, congressional, and mayoral – for November. Leading PN and PL contenders have made headlines due to corruption allegations. Congress president Oliva (PN), a vocal opponent of Maccih, was named years earlier in connection with Maccih investigations. Most recently, in May 2020, a report by Central American investigative magazine Expediente Público alleged he had purchased various properties from a business associate at Inversiones Acrópolis, a company linked by the local media to Los Cachiros drug trafficking organisation. As regards Oliva’s main competitor in the PN primaries, Asfura, who is mayor of Tegucigalpa, in late October 2020 the attorney general’s office requested the removal of his immunity from prosecution in order that he be investigated for crimes including presumed abuse of authority and fraud.  

The likely PL favourite is Yani Rosenthal, a former minister of the presidency (2006-2007) under Zelaya, PL legislator (2010-2014), and presidential pre-candidate (2012). Rosenthal returned to Honduras in August 2020 having served a three-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2017 to laundering money for Los Cachiros through a holding company controlled by his family, Inversiones Continental (Panama).

Unsurprisingly, a survey published in September 2020 by pollster CID-Gallup showed corruption was considered the top problem. The second voter concern is unemployment - indicative of the impact of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. Late last year Wilfredo Cerrato, the president of Honduras’s central bank, said that the pandemic, along with the impact of hurricane Eta, which devastated the country in November, was expected to result in GDP contracting between 8%-9% in 2020. However, this did not take into account the impact of hurricane 'Iota' which followed Eta. An earlier (June) CID Gallup survey revealed disillusionment with the political class. The survey showed 49% of respondents did not identify with any political party, while 29% identified with the PN, 13% cited the PL, and 7%, Libre.

Over the last decade Argentina has become a major player in the lithium sector. This is largely due to the immense salt flats in the country’s northwest which serve as mining hubs. There are production centres at Fénix, Olaroz, Cauchari-Olaroz, Centenario-Ratones, and Mariana. In contrast to some other lithium-mining jurisdictions, Argentina has been able to build a substantial pipeline of diverse projects at different stages of development. In 2024 total lithium production reached 240,000 tonnes, more than double the 107,000t reported in 2023.

The US Geological Service USGS estimates global lithium reserves at around 30m tonnes, with 4m tonnes held by Argentina, equivalent to 13% of the current world total. Other key producers are Australia, China, and Chile.

Under the right-wing pro-market government of President Javier Milei, Argentina has been eager to attract large-scale investment in critical minerals. In mid 2024 the government launched the Incentive Regime for Large Investments (RIGI), which offers tax, customs, and foreign exchange stability for projects worth US$200m or more. One incentive: the promise of tax stability for 30 years. Mining giant Rio Tinto became the first company to benefit from RIGI in May 2025 with the launch of a US$2.5bn lithium project in Salta province. Argentina’s lithium output capacity rose from 75,000 tonnes per annum in 2023 to 186,000t in 2025; the government is targeting 658,000t by 2030.

At least 19 rare earth deposits have been found in Argentina. An environmental impact study by Litica Resources (a subsidiary of oil company Pluspetrol) may pave the way for start-up of rare earth mining in the country’s northwestern provinces. According to the national geological and mining service (Segemar), nine of the 19 known deposits are located in Salta province, with the most prominent being Rangel, La Barba, El Ucu, and Platería Sur y Norte. Rangel is estimated to contain 35,000 tonnes of yttrium, and 25,000 tonnes of thorium, as well as zirconium, niobium, uranium, and gold.

Segemar says REE resources likely represent “hundreds of thousands” of tonnes but lacks the data necessary to estimate a credible figure for commercial reserves. Some analysts have however speculated that commercial, proven reserves could be close to 200,000 tonnes. Over the next few decades Argentine developments in the critical minerals sector are likely to be driven by lithium. Together with Chile and Bolivia, the country forms part of the lithium triangle, one of the world’s largest concentrations of lithium reserves. Significantly much of the lithium in the triangle is contained in liquid brine which has production costs of around US$3,500-US$4,000 per tonne, compared to US$6,000-US$8,000 for Australian spodumere and US$5,000-US$7,000 for Chinese processing.

The Lithium Triangle region

Source: Yale Environment

Segemar also reports that several cobalt projects are in development. These include Las Águilas in San Luis province with 4.6m tonnes in nickel and cobalt deposits; King Tut in La Rioja province with 0.02m tonnes in gold, cobalt, and silver; and La Niquelina-Esperanza in Salta province containing gold, nickel, lead, and cobalt.  

Argentina is increasingly seen as playing a strategic role in global rare earths/critical minerals, enabling diversification and reducing dependence on China. In February this year US secretary of state Marco Rubio said, “Argentina has the capacity in terms of natural resources…not just for the United States, but for the world”. Recognition of that strategic importance has come despite the very early stages of sector development: the country has no reliable estimates of commercial reserves, no functioning rare earth mines, and no rare earth separation plants. It does however have a track record as a copper and base metals miner, with some degree of transferrable skills.

This year the government expects US$14bn worth of investment coming in through the RIGI scheme, mostly connected to big copper projects. More widely the Buenos Aires government is seeking to reconcile US and Chinese interests: while Argentina is ideologically close to Donald Trump, China offers a larger export market. In 2023 Argentine exports to the US were US$8.6bn, but exports to China were substantially higher at US$14.5bn.

Argentine mining expert Julio Theaux says the main rare earth deposits currently attracting attention include Rodeo de los Molles in San Luis province which has 2.1% ore grades; Distrito Rangel in Jujuy and Salta province, Jasimampa (Santiago del Estero) and Barker (Buenos Aires province). The last-named is seen as particularly attractive because the rare earths are embedded in soft ionic clays, likely reducing extraction costs compared to hard rocks. Theaux says that in developing the REE sector Argentina must avoid a series of potential traps. These include investing too much in exports of low value-added ores; depending too much on any single source of financing; and failing to ensure significant technology transfer. Theaux recommends signing long term mining contracts, lasting 20-30 years, and minimising adverse environmental impacts.

Mexico will play a key role in Western Hemisphere relations over the next few years. In terms of population, territory, and GDP, Mexico is one of the largest countries in the LAC region, after Brazil. However, unlike Brazil, Mexico also shares a long 3,145kms border with the United States. Through the nearshoring of manufacturing businesses it is closely integrated with the US economy. This makes both countries strategic partners, whether their politicians like it or not. Bilateral relations cover a wide range of issues including both legal and undocumented migration, crime and drug trafficking, employment, and manufacturing.

Trump’s initial political successes in the US came from populist attacks on Mexico and Mexicans, who were according to him associated with corruption, crime, job losses, and de-industrialisation in the US, as well as various forms of cultural erosion. In Trump’s first presidency the border wall was extended as a symbolic attempt to shut out foreigners. Since then, there have been further nativist policies, including large scale deportations of undocumented Mexicans and increasing threats of military action against Mexican drug cartels

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum took office in 2024 after comfortably winning mid-year elections at the head of her left-wing political party, Movimiento de Renovación Nacional (Morena). Mexican presidents have six-year terms so barring anything unforeseen Sheinbaum will be in office until 2030. In the interim there will be US mid-term congressional elections this year (November) with Trump’s four-year term ending in January 2029.

Despite her party’s tradition of leftwing nationalism Sheinbaum has made a name for herself for responding to Trump’s demands calmly and pragmatically while seeking to keep what she describes as a “cool head”. One example: after Trump told Fox News in January that the US was considering “ground operations” in Mexico to hit the cartels, Sheinbaum said “There will be nothing of the sort in Mexico, that’s President Trump’s way of speaking. We have a relationship based on cooperation and collaboration, not subordination. We have always said no to these operations.” Sheinbaum also cited a bilateral security agreement signed with Secretary of State Marco Rubio in September last year which “guides our actions on both sides of the border; each country has its own tasks to accomplish on its own territory”.

That said, the Mexican president is likely to remain under constant pressure from a more assertive US. A hardline on Mexico has become electorally necessary in the eyes of the MAGA movement. On the other hand, reducing the violence of the criminal cartels which have embedded themselves in Mexican society for three decades or more is a difficult task, and not one easily solvable though surgical US missile strikes or other largely performative activities. The US is itself of course a significant part of the problem because its massive retail consumption of cocaine and other drugs turns production and trafficking into super-profitable activities for the Mexican cartels. A further factor of complexity is that Mexico, Canada, and the US are due to renegotiate their USMCA free trade agreement this year. During negotiations the Trump administration may seek further protectionist and tariff increases, ratcheting up uncertainty among Mexico-based businesses and investors.

Sheinbaum remains popular (with an approval rate still above 70%) and, with national elections not due until four years’ time, she has some political room for manoeuvre. That said, economic growth is sluggish, criminal groups remain strong, and Trump-related uncertainty is high: this increases the possibility that Mexico may become exasperated and that its stance on bilateral relations will harden sharply at some point in the coming years. A US military strike on Mexican territory is likely to be a red line for Sheinbaum. If it happens it could trigger a surge in ani-Yankee sentiment and major diplomatic crisis.

Unfortunately for Costa Ricans, the governmental priorities at the onset of 2012 are the same as those cited at the start of 2011. The past year was effectively lost, both due to the political in-fighting that marred relations within members of the ruling Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN) as well as the opposition’s inability to maximize its newly acquired control of the legislative assembly (AL) and force the PLN to make concessions regarding key legislative initiatives such as the long-delayed fiscal reform. There is, in fact, very little to show for the considerable political mudslinging that characterized 2011. Were it not for the regular public confrontations between Costa Rican and Nicaraguan officials over the border dispute in the vicinity of the San Juan River, the administration of President Laura Chinchilla could be faring even worse in public opinion polls.

In fact, a survey conducted by the University of Costa Rica (UCR) released on 14 November 2011, found that 53.7% of respondents believe President Chinchilla has “no power to govern” (against 22.7% who believe she does). Furthermore, when presented with the statement “the cabinet that the president has is good for nothing”, 52.6% of the people interviewed agreed with it against only 17% who disagreed. At the time, President Chinchilla answered press questions about the results by saying, “tell me in which poll we do well, I don’t see news in [reporting] this [result]”; however, the president missed the point that the results, rather than showing discontent with this administration in particular, reflect a more widespread discontent with the entire political system.

It is true that the president and her party stand to lose the most as they are currently in government, but an earlier poll (published by Unimer in late October) showed that 44% of respondents believe the AL’s performance in 2011 had been “bad” or “regular”. That this general discontent with the performance of politicians affects representatives from all parts of the political spectrum was further demonstrated by the poll’s result in which people said that two-thirds of all legislation passed by the AL in 2011 was “useless”.

Opposition: jostling for power

In early January Oscar López, the president of the opposition Partido Accesibilidad Sin Exclusión (Pase), offered his party’s four votes to the ruling PLN at the 1 May AL election. If the two groups were to reach an agreement, President Chinchilla could recover control of the assembly which she lost in a historic May 2011 vote [RC-11-04]. In exchange for its votes, Pase wants the AL presidency. It also wants all four of its AL members to be appointed to the eight-person directorate from May - the PLN would take the other four spots. If the two parties reach an agreement, it will not only destroy the opposition alliance that took over the AL directorate from the PLN last year, but it will also make it harder for the opposition to rally behind a single unity candidate for the 2014 presidential election.

The PLN currently has 24 members in the 57-seat legislature, but it needs 29 to gain the control of the directorate, which sets the legislative agenda. It has already secured the votes of two evangelical parties, Restauración Nacional and Renovación Costarricense, which have one representative each. With Pase support, the PLN would have 30 votes.

• Costa Rica and Nicaragua vie to outdo each other

In early December, the Nicaraguan government led by President Daniel Ortega submitted a letter of complaint to Costa Rica regarding a 160km road construction project near their common border. Nicaragua reminded Costa Rica that it had committed to share the results of an environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the road project and denounced the road as “a crime against nature”. A few days later, Costa Rica’s supreme court of justice (CSJ) agreed to consider an injunction filed by two Costa Rican NGOs against the council for road safety (Cosevi) and President Laura Chinchilla, marking the first time that the CSJ has agreed to consider an injunction filed against a serving president.

In late December, the Costa Rican government sent a formal note to its Nicaraguan counterpart, accusing 15 Nicaraguan soldiers of entering “approximately 1 kilometre into Costa Rican territory” and of “threatening” Costa Rican police officers. The alleged incursion has heightened tensions between the two countries over the disputed border area and it is still unclear how the two governments will end this year-long tit-for-tat strategy. 

• Figueres speaks against premature competition

In what could be seen as a clear attack on Rodrigo Arias Sánchez, the brother and minister of former President Oscar Arias Sánchez (2006-2010), former President José María Figueres (1994-1998) said in early January that it was too early for potential PLN 2014 presidential candidates to begin jostling for power; instead, he holds that all party members should rally behind President Laura Chinchilla in what is expected to be a tough year ahead. Rodrigo Arias is so far the only declared presidential pre-candidate; the mayor of San José, Johnny Araya, and Antonio Alvarez Desanti, a local businessman affiliated to the PLN who served in the legislative assembly during Figueres’s administration, are being touted as the other two possible contenders

INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

TO: All Strategic Intelligence Forum members

DATE: 23 March 2007

The Strategic Intelligence Forum is part of the Intelligence Research group, and as a member of the Strategic Intelligence Forum I am very pleased to send you from time to time a selection of reports published recently by Intelligence Research Ltd that I consider to be of particular STRATEGIC significance. Please find below my latest selection of Intelligence Research articles:

1. TAIWAN'S LEGAL QUESTIONS - AsiaInt Political & Strategic Review, March 2007

SUMMARY: On 4 March President Chen Shui-bian issued his strongest call yet for Taiwan to become a sovereign state. "Taiwan wants independence, wants name rectification, wants a new constitution, and wants development," Chen declared in a speech that will define the island’s political debate ahead of the legislative election in December and presidential vote in April 2008.  Should Chen’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) win the elections, it will see victory as a popular mandate for its increasingly radical claims for sovereignty. Whether or not this leads to a formal declaration of independence, Taiwan’s dubious political status in international law is likely to come under ever-more intense scrutiny in the coming years. China’s claim under law is not as strong as often imagined, and here we explain why...

Link to full article: http://www.asiaint.com/arl/arl13313.asp

2. PROSPECTS FOR REFORM IN MYANMAR - AsiaInt Political & Strategic Review, March 2007

SUMMARY: Myanmar’s military dictatorship has reached a crossroads. Here we take a detailed look at the Burmese set-up and make some predictions as to the pariah state’s likely political trajectory...

Link to full article: http://www.asiaint.com/arl/arl13312.asp

3. MEXICO: CALDERON'S WARNING OVER OIL, Latin American Weekly Report, 22 March 2007

SUMMARY: On 18 March, the 69th anniversary of the nationalisation of the country's oil industry, Mexico's President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa announced that the country's oil reserves would last for less than 10 years at the current rate of production. The rapid dwindling of the country's oil reserves and falling production has major implications for the government which gets almost 40% of its revenues from oil...

Link to full article: http://www.latinnews.com/lwr/LWR13383.asp?instance=13

4. BUSH'S VISIT HIGHLIGHTS MERCOSUR SCHISM, Brazil & Southern Cone Report, March 2007

SUMMARY: The visit of US President George W Bush to Brazil and Uruguay earlier this month highlighted the schism within Mercosur, the trading bloc to which Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela belong. As Bush stepped onto Mercosur soil, the debate over trade asymmetries, which seriously undermine the economies of Mercosur's smallest members, Paraguay and Uruguay, were once again overshadowed by populist politics in Argentina and Venezuela. Meanwhile, the bloc's largest member, Brazil, vacillates between economic pragmatism and populist rhetoric...

Link to full article: http://www.latinnews.com/lrbs/LRBS13384.asp?instance=12

NOTE: Links to these - and other - reports can also be found in the Strategic Intelligence Monitoring Centre, which you may access on a 24/7 basis by going to www.stratintforum.com, logging in as a member, and selecting the Strategic Intelligence Monitoring Centre option.

With best regards

JKC de Courcy
Chairman
Strategic Intelligence Forum

P.S. You may sign up for a free evaluation of any Intelligence Research Ltd services by visiting the following websites, or you may contact our Business Development Director: [email protected].

www.intelligenceresearch.com
www.stratintforum.com
www.asiaint.com
www.latinnews.com

Perhaps symbolising the potential for Chinese EV sales to Brazil, the world’s largest car-carrying ship made its maiden voyage to the Brazilian port of Itajaí in May 2025, carrying the equivalent of 20 football fields’ worth of back-to-back new cars. In four trips in the first half of this year BYD delivered around 22,000 vehicles. Reactions have been somewhat mixed, with many Brazilians cheering what they see as the arrival of a new wave of affordable zero-emission vehicles. However, others expressed fears that cheap imports may end up weakening Brazilian auto production and causing future job losses.

BYD is the largest EV manufacturer in the world. It is predicted that Chinese EV imports into Brazil will grow by 40% this year to reach 200,000 vehicles, or 8% of existing light vehicle registrations. Brazil currently charges a temporary 10% import tariff on all imported vehicles. Trade union and business lobby groups fear that the Chinese are taking advantage of these comparatively low tariffs to seize market share and build customer loyalty. The local lobbies on the other hand fear this could, on the medium to long term, squeeze their profitability. To protect against that eventuality, they want tariffs increased to around 35% to protect national auto production. “Countries around the world started closing their doors to the Chinese, but Brazil didn’t” Aroaldo da Silva, a Mercedes Benz production worker and trade unionist, told Reuters news agency. In his view, this gave China a pathway to getting into Brazil, an attractive market because of its size, and to challenge the incumbents such as Volkswagen, General Motors, and Stellantis (whose Jeep brand is popular locally).

In 2015 the Brazilian government eliminated import tariffs on EV makers such as BYD in an attempt to attract them to invest in new local assembly plants. While BYD and others began developing plans to build local factories, after a change in government a 10% tariff on imports and a quota system was introduced to protect those already operating in Brazil. This tariff is due to rise further in 6-monthly steps taking it up to 35% by 2026. Automobile manufacturers’ association ANFAVEA has requested a more accelerated move to raise tariff levels. The ministry of trade and industry says the “gradual resumption of tariffs with decreasing quotas” is intended to “allow companies to continue with their development plans and respect the maturity of manufacturing”. Existing legislation also provides for some zero-tariff imports of EVs and PHEVs.

One of the deportees on the flights to El Salvador ordered by President Donald Trump in mid-March was a Salvadoran citizen, Kilmar Abrego García. The US political battle over crime and migration was to pluck him abruptly from relative obscurity, turning his case into a hotly contested and high-profile example of the issues involved.

It rapidly became clear that Abrego García should not have been on the flight at all. He had never been charged with, or convicted, of any crime, either in El Salvador or the United States. He had however admitted entering the US illegally in 2011 at the age of 16. He said he had done so to escape gang threats. Acknowledging that claim, in 2019 a US immigration judge had granted him “withholding of removal” status, which allowed him to live and work legally in the United States.

At the time he was arrested and deported Abrego García was living in Maryland with his wife and children, who are US citizens. The US government initially accepted that a mistake had been made. In a court filing in April, it said ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) “was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador” but still deported him because of “an administrative error”. Once in El Salvador Abrego García was held in the notorious CECOT prison: his lawyers say he was tortured, beaten, and suffered sleep deprivation there.

Despite the evidence of a miscarriage of justice, the US administration nevertheless dug in its heels. It claimed Abrego García was a member of MS-13, a Salvadoran criminal street gang, which he has denied. Abrego García’s wife filed a suit requesting that he be returned to the US. As a result, a US District Court ordered the government to arrange for his return. The administration appealed that ruling, but it was unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court which said the authorities had an obligation to “facilitate” his return to the US. There was then further legal argument over the meaning of the word “facilitate”. The Trump administration refused to actively request El Salvador to release him. It was eventually agreed that Washington could meet its obligations by providing an aircraft and allowing his re-entry into the US.

Although litigation continues on this aspect of the case, with defence lawyers seeking access to key documents which the government claims it cannot share since they involve “state secrets,” Abrego García was returned to the US on 6 June this year. At the same time the Department of Justice (DoJ) said it was indicting and re-arresting him in Tennessee on charges of “conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain” and “unlawful transportation of aliens for financial gain”. He denies both charges.

A federal judge ordered that he be released pending trial, but after only three days he was re-arrested. His defence lawyers say the DoJ offered a plea bargain saying that if he pleaded guilty to the people smuggling charges he would, after serving prison time, be deported to Costa Rica, one of the safer countries in Central America. He refused the deal: his legal team was meanwhile investigating filing a new request for political asylum. The DoJ is also threatening to deport Abrego García to Uganda, a country with which he has no ties. A ruling by US District Court judge Paula Xinis temporarily banned any new deportation attempt telling a deputy district attorney active in the case that “your clients are absolutely forbidden at this juncture to remove Mr Abrego García from the continental United States”.

The Trump administration has kept up its hostile running commentary on the case. On social media Homeland Security advisor Kristi L Noem wrote that “President Trump is not going to allow this illegal alien, who is an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser and child predator, to terrorise American citizens any longer” while Trump himself called him “an animal” and Attorney General Pam Biondi said “he will no longer terrorise our country”. Critics of the administration pointed out that Abrego García has not been charged or proven guilty on any of these alleged crimes.

Elora Mukherjee, a law professor at Columbia University, told Slate, the online magazine, “The administration is punishing Mr Abrego García for his willingness to speak out about the abuses he suffered at CECOT. The administration is targeting him because he’s trying to seek justice and hold them accountable for their administrative mistake in sending him to El Salvador.”

Looking at the big picture, the Trump government’s focus on immigrant crime, the push to allow express deportation without due process, the search for host countries like El Salvador willing to accept those being expelled, and the treatment of individuals like Abrego García, all seem to point to a sustained attempt to create the institutional architecture needed to allow the fast-track expulsion of large numbers of foreign residents from the country. An important side-issue is that Trump is also pushing back against the judiciary to prevent it applying checks and balances to executive branch. How far or fast this will progress is not clear. The Trump administration has set itself the target of deporting 1m undocumented migrants for each year of his presidency, but in the first nine months of 2025 it is estimated that the number was significantly lower at around only 332,000. The pace of deportations is picking up, however, rising to 1,500 a day, a level not seen since the presidency of Trump’s Democratic Party predecessor Barrack Obama (2009-2017) who, according to the New York Times, earned himself the nickname of “deporter in chief”. In fact, in fiscal year 2019 during the Obama administration, 974,000 migrants were deported, a number which has not been exceeded in any year since.

The outcome of the legal battles over the Alien Enemies Act and of next year’s mid-term congressional elections are likely to significantly influence the pace of future deportations. According to the Department of Homeland Security deportations are set to surge because of a big increase in the budget for ICE – up to US$76bn in the next fiscal year – that was voted through as part of Trump’s “One big beautiful bill”. Among other things ICE’s fleet of aircraft is being expanded to allow for more deportation flights.

Deportation from interior and border enforcement (2023-2024

Notes: “Border” refers to removals initiated as arrests by Customs and Border Protection, usually near the border. “Interior” refers to the removals initiated as ICE arrests, typically in the interior. Data for 2024 is extrapolated from first five months of FY24)

Source: The Transactional Records Access Clearing House (TRAC) at Syracuse University

Most Palestinians have been campaigning for a two-state solution with Israel: an independent Palestinian state existing alongside the Jewish state. However, as internal Palestinian divisions between the secular Fatah and fundamentalist Hamas persist, the Palestinians may find themselves with a two-state solution they had not bargained for: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip separating. An SIR correspondent reports from the Middle East and examines the current strategic threat to Palestinian aspirations of statehood.

The West Bank and the Gaza Strip, geographically separated by a 40 km-wide swathe of the Negev desert, are part of historical Palestine and were to have been joined at a point south-west of Jerusalem under the 1947 UN Partition Plan. However, they have always been distinctly different regions: before the 1967 war the former was under Jordanian authority and the latter was governed by Egypt. Jordan, which annexed the West Bank in 1950, did much to develop the region. Egypt’s rule over Gaza was notable only for its neglect.

Since the death of Yasser Arafat in November 2004, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has disintegrated into feuding power factions. These days, the West Bank is dominated by Fatah – which dominated Palestinian politics since the early 1960s – while Gaza has become the stronghold of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) after Fatah forces were crushed there during several months of internecine violence. This rivalry continues to bedevil efforts to form a unity government, and only exacerbates the regional differences between the two territories.

As hopes of a viable Palestinian state evaporate in the face of constant Israeli encroachment in the West Bank and the punitive destruction of the Palestinian economy, so too does the concept of a two-state solution, with a Palestinian entity and Israel co-existing beside each other and an end to a century of bloodshed in the region. In early March, Shalom Hariri, a leading Israeli specialist on Palestinian affairs, warned: "We’re seeing the beginning of two states – a state of Gaza under Hamas control and the state of the West Bank governed from Ramallah."

Divide and conquer

Israel has long sought to divide Palestinian society to prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital. The former PNA planning minister, Ghassan Khatib, says this "intentional and systematic policy of separating the West Bank from the Gaza Strip" is a key Israeli strategy "vis-à-vis the occupied territories" along with the continued expansion of West Bank settlements to divide the Palestinian population and dominate it. "Separating Gaza and the West Bank from each other probably constitutes the most immediate strategic threat to the Palestinian objective of establishing an independent state," adds Khatib.

As Yisrael Harel, who heads the Institute for Zionist Strategy in Jerusalem, wrote recently: "It is indeed in Israel’s interest that Gaza be separated from Judea and Samaria [the biblical name for the West Bank] and that Gaza be linked to Egypt and not to Judea and Samaria by means of a corridor crossing Israeli territory."

Harel also suggested that "Gaza would be Egypt’s headache, while in areas A and B of Judea and Samaria, Israel could maintain its military rule as long as terrorism continues. And on the day that it ends, there could emerge Palestinian self-rule linked to Jordan." In other words, there would be no independent Palestinian state embracing both the West Bank and Gaza.

The Oslo accords stipulated that the West Bank and the much smaller Gaza Strip were "a single territorial unit" that would be linked by a safe corridor. However, that arrangement collapsed when the current intifada erupted on 28 September 2000. Since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in September 2005, it has blocked all Palestinian travel between the two territories, citing security concerns.

Confederation with Jordan?

According to Hanna Siniora, a Palestinian publisher who was a key figure in the previous Palestinian intifada in 1987-91, this "forces us to revisit the possibility of a confederation with Jordan".

Moreover, Yival Diskin, director of Israel’s General Security Service (Shin Bet) recently told The Washington Post that: "I’m not one of those who say there are two Palestinian peoples, but there are two mentalities. Two geographies, two economies that make the places different. We have very strong security interests in not allowing strong ties between Gaza and the West Bank. If you open channels between the areas, you’ll see an increase in terror in the West Bank."

Amid the collapse of central authority in the Palestinian territories, accelerated by Hamas’ domination of Gaza, there are even fears that the West Bank could split in two, a northern enclave around the towns of Nablus and Jenin, and a southern region centred on Bethlehem and Hebron. This is being highlighted by Israel’s envelopment of Arab East Jerusalem and the security barrier that will to all intents and purposes slice the West Bank in two along a line running eastward from Jerusalem.

Nablus, the main city in the northern West Bank, and other population centres in the region are already largely out of the PNA’s control are now run by clan-based warlords, and crime is rife.

Regional animosities

Palestinian society has always tended to be tribally-oriented, and the powerful clans in the two geographically distinct segments of the self-rule Palestinian territories have reasserted themselves as central authority has crumbled. When the PNA was established it was based in Ramallah, the West Bank’s commercial hub. Since Hamas won its landslide victory in parliamentary elections in January 2006, the seat of political authority has moved to Gaza City.

In the West Bank, the patriarchal Hashashibi, Husseini, Ja’abari, and Masri clans dominate. These have close ties with Jordan, where more than half the population is Palestinian or of Palestinian origin. Leading Palestinian families, well integrated into Jordanian society, have controlling interests in the industrial, banking, commercial, and agricultural sectors. This prosperous elite has significant financial holdings in the West Bank.

There has long been animosity between the peoples of the two regions. Khalil Shiqaqi, a leading Palestinian sociologist, noted in an exhaustive demographic study that there is "a psychological barrier between the inhabitants of the two territories and…mutual suspicion" that cannot be "disregarded or ignored".

He also concluded that the more prosperous, better educated West Bankers view Gaza as "one big refugee camp" with a backward society "inclined to roughness, extremism, grimness, fanaticism, and instability". For their part, Gazans consider West Bankers to be aloof, patronising and "racist" who treat them as "third class citizens".

Rising power of crime syndicates

In Gaza, the influence once held by the Shawwa, Shafei, and Middein families has been largely seized by the private militias run by Palestinian security service chiefs and the clans who control organised crime in the territory such as the Dughmush and the Abu Samhadanna. These crime syndicates have largely allied themselves with Hamas.

In contrast, the more secular West Bankers, who number about 2.5 million, see little benefit in being tied to the anarchic Gaza Strip and its 1.4 million population. One million of the latter are refugees who have largely transferred their allegiance to Hamas.

The late King Hussein of Jordan relinquished responsibility for the West Bank in July 1988, but his son, King Abdullah II, has been showing a revived interest in the region of late. Leading West Bank families have bombarded Amman with appeals to send security forces to help restore law and order in the region.

In 2005 Abduallah agreed to send the Badr Battalion of the defunct Palestine Liberation Army, whose forces in the Hashemite kingdom were under the control of the Royal Jordanian Army, to the West Bank to help bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s forces, although to date it has still not shown up. Interestingly, Abbas maintains a home in Amman and enjoys close ties to Abdullah.

Moreover, the Jordanian royal family itself has strong links to the West Bank. Queen Rania’s family hails from the west Bank town of Tulkarem, and in February 2005, the monarch replaced his half-brother Prince Hamza as crown prince in favour of his own 10-year-old son, Prince Hussein, who has Palestinian blood through his mother.

Just under three months after taking office, President Sebastian Pinera used the annual state of the nation address on 1 June to unveil his economic policy objectives for the duration of his term in office.

The main take-away from the speech was that the president has, for now at least, abandoned a campaign pledge to reduce the level of corporation tax, which had been raised to 27% by his predecessor, Michelle Bachelet. This was justified in the context of needing to reduce the fiscal deficit, which has risen sharply in recent years, coming in at 2.8% of GDP in 2017. The government had already outlined plans in May to cut spending by US$5bn over the next four years, but the authorities clearly felt that cutting the corporation tax rate would deprive them of much-needed revenue. However, President Pinera did say that he planned to simplify the corporation tax system in order to provide investors with greater legal certainty, in line with his administration’s pro-business stance. Holding the corporation tax rate unchanged will free up funds for public spending in other areas. Although overall the fiscal policy stance will become more austere, the president stated that he planned to increase spending on public works projects to a total of US$20bn over his four-year term, in a bid to improve the quality of the country’s infrastructure.

Other policy priorities outlined in President Pinera’s speech include changes in the way that the military is funded, to put an end to partial funding from the state copper firm Codelco, as well as changes to financial lending to university students and to regulation of private healthcare providers. The president also stated that he planned to amend the processes related to evaluating the environmental impact of potential investment projects. Coming on the back of new plans to create an executive office to cut red tape and accelerate investment, this reflects broader efforts to lift investment. Despite the fact that the president faces a fractured congress, in which neither his centre-right coalition nor the centre-left opposition has a working majority, there was little in his speech that garnered widespread criticism, suggesting that the new administration is likely to make progress – if relatively slowly, owing to the need to build a working majority for each bill – on the objectives outlined in Pinera’s speech.

Although the Colombian economy is more diversified than its neighbour Venezuela, it is still vulnerable to any sustained global move away from fossil fuels. In 2019, for example, 48.6% of its total exports were fossil fuels (crude and refined petroleum, 39.4%, coal and coke 9.2%). In pursuit of a promised 51% cut in CO2 emissions by 2030, the national government and energy companies are seeking to strike some kind of balance between maintaining fossil fuel production and nudging the energy mix towards greater reliance on renewables. Some elements of that balance are sharply criticised by environmentalists. With low conventional oil reserves (representing about seven years of production), Colombia has for example given the go-ahead to the drilling of pilot fracking wells by ExxonMobil in the department of Santander in the northeast of the country. It has also invested in upstream exploration in the Permian basin in Texas.

The authorities are backing several green initiatives. The city of Bogotá has signed a contract with Enel X of Italy and BYD of China to operate a fleet of 401 electric-powered, zero emission buses. Although Colombia had a late start developing wind and solar generation, the government has promised to increase renewable capacity substantially. Currently 70% of domestic electricity supply comes from hydroelectric sources, with non-hydro renewables (wind and solar) accounting for only 1%. However, the government says it aims to increase renewable capacity to 2.2GW by 2022, up from 1.5GW. The National Energy Plan 2050 calls for non-hydro renewables to account for 10% of electricity supply by 2028. 

In sharp contrast to Pemex and Petrobras in Mexico and Brazil, majority state-owned Ecopetrol has strongly indicated its intention to diversify its energy mix. At the beginning of 2021 it launched a US$4bn bid to buy a controlling stake in electricity transmission company Grupo Isa. If the bid succeeds it would give Ecopetrol a stake in transmission businesses not only in Colombia but also in Peru, Chile, and Brazil. Ecopetrol has also announced measures to reduce wasteful natural gas flaring. In 2018 the company built a solar farm to power one of its oilfields and says that by 2023 it will have 400 MW of renewable capacity, enough to cover half its energy needs. For some analysts the switch to invest in electricity transmission businesses is too abrupt a change and could backfire. But Lisa Viscidi, director of energy at lobby group Inter-American Dialogue, told the Financial Times that oil companies “can’t really address climate change just by reducing their own emissions, so diversification into power generation is part of their climate strategy.”

Latin America solar and wind annual net additions by country

Ecopetrol CEO Felip Bayón has said his company has chosen to act boldly. He says it needs to continue investing in the core oil and gas business “because the world is going to need petrol, diesel, and jet fuel for at least another 20 years”. Bayón says Ecopetrol will also aim to lift its lower emission natural gas activities from 22% to 35% of total hydrocarbons production.  

James Park, chief executive of GeoPark, the country’s second largest oil producer after Ecopetrol, recently observed: “We have cut gas flaring, we are changing from diesel to gas feedstocks and in Colombia we are joining an electricity grid that is 60% renewable. We are also investing in green infrastructure – for example, we built a 40km pipeline, which has replaced 205 daily truck journeys.”

Colombia is one of Latin America’s largest coal producers and will be affected by falling global investment interest in coal mining, now seen as deeply harmful to the environment. Colombia’s coal exports remain significant. Much of the coal is produced by the Cerrejón open-cast mine, one of the largest in the world owned in three equal shares by BHP, Anglo American, and Glencore. The company was severely hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, with production sharply reduced in 2020. It also faces troubled labour relations and opposition from local indigenous groups who are complaining over poor air quality. Under pressure from shareholders both Glencore and BHP have said they will consider scaling down their coal operations. It is therefore possible that the mine (which employs 4,000 workers) may be sold or closed down in the medium term, forcing a potentially painful process of economic and social re-adjustment.

Outgoing Cuban President Raúl Castro told a visiting US congressional delegation in February that 2018 is the year in which the country’s two currencies will finally be unified. But unification, which poses complex economic challenges, has been promised for years: so the process may still drag on.

According to US Democratic party senator Ron Wyden, Castro told the delegation that the two-currency system is distorting the island economy and will be replaced this year. The two currency system was introduced in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union: faced by a major economic crisis the Cuban government took a series of emergency measures during what was known as the ‘special period’. One of these was to create a new, dollar-pegged convertible Cuban peso (CUC) which was used for foreign trade, tourism, and the sale of some imported goods in special hard currency stores (now known as shoppings). The domestically focused Cuban peso (CUP) meanwhile remained in use for the payment of wages and the trading of most locally produced goods and services. The current exchange rate between the two is 24 CUPs to 1 CUC. The two-currency system has been used to try to maximise foreign currency earnings. As part of its operation, local wage costs are kept very low in US dollar terms. Average wages stand at 672 CUPs a month, equivalent to only 28 US dollars.

If it happens, currency unification will be a major milestone in what promises to be a big transition year. Cuba is due to appoint a new president in April, after nearly six decades of rule by the two Castro brothers: the late Fidel, who was in power from 1959 to 2008, and Raúl, who took over from him. While the Communist Party continues dominant, the transition is likely to see a new and younger generation gaining power. But the direction of economic policy during the transition remains uncertain. When he took office, Raúl signalled a relaxation of the state’s previously tight control of the economy. In recent years, however, policies toward the private sector have been repeatedly relaxed and then tightened. Politically, if currency unification is done in a way that causes inflation and erodes living standards, the government may consider yet another postponement.

A possible pointer to the future came in February with the leak of a draft set of new economic regulations. These point to further tightening of controls on private sector activity. Licences to operate a private restaurant, cafeteria or bars should be amended to restrict the number of seats to 50, down from 100 or more at present, the document suggests. State controls are to be strengthened at “municipal, provincial, and national level” it adds. The document may reflect concern that those in the private sector, particularly those with access to CUCs, are in the eyes of the Communist Party becoming too prosperous. In December, officials suggested that the number of permitted private sector activities would be cut to 122 categories, down from around 200 previously. The number of self-employed Cubans has grown sharply from 157,731 at the start of Raúl Castro’s liberalisation process, to 567,982 in mid-2017. A private entrepreneur providing bed and breakfast to tourists can charge US$30 a night – more than the average monthly wage in the state sector.

Also in February, Vice-president Marino Murillo, widely seen as the key official in charge of the economic reform process, was publicly self-critical, saying that the changes had “incurred more errors than virtues”. He said there had been insufficient training and poor implementation of policy directives. Murillo nevertheless confirmed the move towards currency unification, saying that one of its aims would be to create more favourable conditions for state-owned companies.

Resuming FTA talks with Colombia: Between 11-15 March, the sixth round of negotiations regarding a bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Colombia and Panama took place in the Colombian city of Medellín. This followed the 23 February announcement by Panama’s trade minister, Ricardo Quijano, that the talks which had been suspended in October 2010 would resume. According to Colombia’s trade ministry, exports to Panama grew by 32.3% in 2012 to a value of US$2.86bn, 87% of which corresponded to oil, coal and other mining products. Meanwhile imports from Panama reached US$71.6m, mainly comprising machinery and equipment (54.4%) and basic chemicals (11.3%).

• Panama’s FTA with Canada takes effect

On 1 April, a free trade agreement (FTA) between Panama and Canada finally took effect, five years after negotiations began in 2008. The deal was ratified by Panama’s unicameral legislature in May 2010 and by Canada in September 2012. According to the latest figures from Canada’s department for foreign trade and international affairs, bilateral trade reached US$235m in 2011, up 105% on the previous five years.

All governments seek to conduct both private and public diplomacy and to project a distinctive image in the world. Public and cultural diplomacy is considered a key and legitimate component of building influence and developing soft power. However, the new social-media toolkit has opened the door to many more indirect and covert routes to manipulate public opinion in Latin American countries.

In October 2023 Spanish news agency EFE said it had gained access to a confidential US State Department cable, warning various governments that based on information from US intelligence sources, Russia had tried to undermine the legitimacy of at least 11 democratic elections between 2020 and 2022 as well as interfering in 17 countries with the aim of manipulating “domestic narratives”. Within Latin America the cable was addressed to the governments of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, and Uruguay.

It said that in one unidentified Latin American country a protest movement against an electoral outcome had been found to be linked to web pages controlled by Russian intelligence agencies. In another, also unidentified, election, this time in Europe, EFE claimed that the Russian intelligence agency FSB had “used intermediaries to deploy agitators, intimidate election officials and organise protests”. The US intelligence community view is that during the US elections of 2020 Russia had discovered such interventions to be cost-effective as a way of “amplifying local narratives that question electoral integrity, such as reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic”.

In fact, during the Cold War there was an ongoing and intense propaganda and information struggle between the West and the Soviet Union. However, since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 that war has become hotter. For a variety of reasons, many countries of the Global South have been unwilling to follow the US and Europe in an unequivocal condemnation of Russian aggression. And in a number of Latin American countries Russia has been able to significantly expand its conventional and social media presence. Moscow-controlled outlets like Sputnik and Russia Today (RT) have launched Spanish versions. According to the Reuters Institute, RT en Español is more successful than any other language services of RT, including English, Arabic, German, and French. RT en Español has over 200 Spanish-speaking journalists in Moscow, and regional offices in Caracas, Havana, and Buenos Aires.

The channel relentlessly follows Moscow’s narrative, blaming the Ukraine war on “Nato aggression”, Washington’s “anti-Russian bias” and more generally on the West’s “neo-colonial foreign policy”. A similar line is taken by the Venezuela-based Telesur TV news channel. According to the Reuters Institute, RT en Español claimed an audience of 18m viewers in 2018, with 25m followers on its social media accounts. The channel’s success has been attributed, amongst other things, to anti-American sentiment and a lack of real knowledge of present-day Russia. Iria Puyosa, a research fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, says Russian information strategy on the channel is to blame any social problems on Western countries while presenting Vladmir Putin as a global leader who brings stability and progress. Russian information strategy also uses troll and bot farms and local influencers to deliver the pro-Russia message. Pro-Russia Spanish influencers have been allowed into the Russian-controlled Donbas region in Ukraine, which is off-limits to most Western reporters.

In foreign policy, the new government has begun a significant shift to the right. In its first days in office, it declined an invitation to join the BRICS group of emerging economies, which includes China and Russia, and which often presents itself as a mouthpiece for the Global South. In its place Milei has signalled a desire to align his country more closely with the United States and Israel. Alejandro Rascovan, a professor at Universidad Nacional de San Martin, is critical of this shift. He says the Buenos Aires government is pursuing an ideological approach to Israel in the middle of the Gaza war; that it is gambling on a Donald Trump victory in the US presidential elections in November this year; and that it is expressing “disdain” for Brazil, a traditional ally of Argentina.

From Rascovan’s point of view, Milei’s first travels as president give a sense of his priorities. He visited the annual Davos summit (organised by the World Economic Forum, WEF), Israel, Italy, and the Vatican. He also attended the meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the United States, a gathering point for far-right activists and Donald Trump supporters.

There are some fears that, under Milei, Argentina will turn its back on regional diplomacy and integration. Until recently the country has been highly active in a range of Latin American organisations including the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the Organisation of American States (OAS), and the South American Common Market (Mercosur – formed by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay). Although Milei has toned down suggestions he would take Argentina out of Mercosur, the common market is likely to struggle given the ideological differences between its two most influential members, Brazil and Argentina,

The new president has also become more pragmatic on the issue of relations with China. During the election campaign he had threatened to downgrade diplomatic relations with Beijing as he did not want “deals with communists”. However, China is a key market for Argentina’s agricultural exports (particularly soya), has set up a US$20bn Central Bank swap facility to help Argentina rebuild its foreign currency reserves, and is an important investor in the lithium mining and infrastructure sectors. China was Argentina’s second most important export market in 2022, taking 9.1% of total shipments worth US$8bn, coming in second to Brazil (which took 14.5% of Argentina’s exports, worth US$12.6bn). Argentina’s relations with Beijing are unlikely to be particularly close, but the two countries will remain significant trade partners.

One main conclusion of this report, therefore, has to be simply put: the era of military intervention in Latin America politics is not over. Failures by a range of civilian institutions will continue to create ‘entry points’ for military intervention and some of these will be taken up. They are less likely to take the shape of ‘old school’ coup d’etats, where the armed forces take direct control of political power with the intention of holding on to it for a period of years. That type of intervention is less likely over the next ten years, although it cannot be entirely ruled out. More likely will be short term interventions to resolve disputes between civilians, as well as the wider phenomenon of ‘stealth interventions’ or behind-the-scenes militarisation.

Another key conclusion is that the armed forces are currently ill-prepared for the challenges of the 21^st century. The gap between their existing resources and structure and the security threats they are expected to confront is dangerously wide. At least three waves of deep structural reforms would appear to be necessary. The first is to improve the effectiveness of civilian institutions. Over the last decade these institutions have effectively failed to deliver solutions to some of the region’s biggest problems: poverty, unequal distribution of income, crime, and corruption. For some, that failure makes a case for military intervention, but there are no ‘silver bullets’ or magic solutions. Military governments or militarised interventions have on the whole failed to resolve the shortcomings of the civilians – the ‘war on drugs’ being a notorious case in point. At the end of the day civilian politicians must, through a process of democratic debate and consensus-building, find viable solutions to civilian problems.

A second wave of reforms is needed to focus on re-assessing the security threats each country faces and finding the best mix of civil and military resource and capabilities to counter them. For some countries a small professional military may be most effective when paired with strengthened civilian border control and law enforcement agencies. In countries with powerful drug cartels there may be a strong case for a military or quasi military police force such as Carabineros in Chile of the new National Guard in Mexico. In almost all countries there is a need to modernise and strengthen the civilian police forces and to rebuild an efficient criminal justice system. Finally, a third wave of reforms can be envisaged to improve democratic oversight and accountability for all defence and law enforcement agencies, whether military or civilian. 

Chile’s National Centre for Artificial Intelligence has been involved in a project over the last two years to create Latam-GPT, a new large language model which specifically focuses on Latin American culture and outlook. CENIA says that although current LLMs are of high quality, “their understanding of the Latin American context could be enriched and refined”. CENIA is also eager to experiment with a more collaborative way of building an LLM, so that the product is “public, open, and inclusive”. Roughly 30 institutions and 60 experts at regional level have been involved in the work.

Rodrigo Durán of CENIA told the BBC that “The importance of this model lies in the fact that it allows the culture, idiosyncrasies, and world view that stem from the history of Latin America to be captured in a language model, which is truly the most transformative technology we’ve seen in recent decades.” As part of the partnership approach project leaders say they have generated a data corpus of over 50trn parameters, comparable to OpenAI’s Chat GPT-3.5. The University of Tarapacá in Chile is proposing to acquire a supercomputer that will be used to train the LLM. Initial training expected to 35-40 days of continuous processing.

Date: By November 2025

Election type: General election for the 15 elected seats in the House of Assembly. A further six members are appointed (four by the government and two by the opposition) to take the total to 21. The leader of the party winning the most elected seats will be asked by the governor-general to form a government and become prime minister.

Main contenders: Left-wing United Labour Party (ULP) and moderate conservative New Democratic Party (NDP).

The NDP once dominated SVG politics, winning four successive victories under the leadership of James Mitchell, from 1984-1998. Since then it has been in the wilderness, losing five successive elections to the ULP under Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves. In the most recent contest, in 2020, the NDP under the leadership of Godwin Friday, was beaten by 9-6 in the closest contest of the ULP’s long dominance.

The ULP will go into the 2025 election with a number of disadvantages, including high unemployment (18.7% in 2023) and high crime. The murder rate, at 40.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, is higher even than Trinidad & Tobago (39.5) and second only in the region to Jamaica (53.3).

Economic growth, on the other hand, has been reasonable, at 5.8% in 2023 and an estimated 4.9% in 2024, and, despite any natural desires for change, Gonsalves remains more popular than his opponent. Gonsalves has an approval rating of 35.2% against 32% for Friday. A recent poll by the Caribbean Institute for Governance and Policy Research put support for the ULP on 33.7% against 30.1% for the NDP.

Most security experts make the point that crime is a multi-faceted phenomenon, caused by a combination of factors, more than any one single one, and depending on conditions that vary from country to country. Some add that anti-crime policies should be based on hard evidence rather than intuition or broad feelings among the voting public. Since the four countries we have focused on are all favouring iron fist policies it is useful to look at some of the pitfalls that have affected that approach elsewhere in Latin America.

One troubling case study would be Mexico in 2006, at the beginning of the Felipe Calderón presidency (2006-2012). Faced by rising crime rates Calderón militarised the conflict, sending in thousands of soldiers and marines who took over key policing functions. The new approach had some short-term successes, with 25 out of the country’s 37 most-wanted cartel chiefs captured or killed. But violence increased sharply, as did human rights violations.

During the six Calderón years there was a record of over 120,000 homicides, with the rate more than doubling from 9.7 to around 22 per 100,000 inhabitants. Rather than reducing violence the cartel decapitation strategy led to bloody battles to control the succession and associated drug routes, and to the fragmentation of rival criminal groups. Calderón and his successors found that having sent the army in, it rapidly became politically much more difficult to recall it back to barracks. Today, 20 years later, the Mexican armed forces are still bogged down in the fight against the drug cartels. Despite some recent improvements the record of the ‘war against drugs’ remains terrible: from 2006 to date an estimated over 460,000 Mexicans have died in a still-ongoing internal conflict.

President Daniel Noboa of Ecuador has also had mixed results from ‘mano dura’ anti-crime policies. His government has deployed the military, seized over 300 tonnes of drugs, and extradited over a dozen crime bosses to the US. The number of extortion complaints is falling. But in contrast the murder rate has surged. In 2025 there were 9,216 homicides in the country, equivalent to an all-time record of 50.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. Analysts say that cartel fragmentation and battles for territory, like in Mexico, is one of the driving factors. The US-based non-profit Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acled) says that the number of identifiable gangs in the country increased by 54% in 2023-2024.

The experience in El Salvador under President Nayib Bukele, on the other hand, is often cited as a powerful success story for ‘mano dura’ policies. The experiment began in March 2022 when, after a weekend of exceptionally high gang violence, the president declared a state of emergency (suspending civil rights) and began to implement a four-part programme consisting of 1) mass arrests of suspected gang members; 2) military and police saturation of previously gang-controlled neighbourhoods (known as the territorial control plan); 3) very long periods of detention without trial; and 4) mass incarceration in purpose built mega-prisons such as the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Cecot). The results were dramatic. There was a steep fall in the homicide rate, from 53.1 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to near-zero, 1.9 per 100,000 in 2024. Presidential candidates around the region have praised ‘Bukelismo’ and proposed building local versions of Cecot. Bukele has regularly featured in regional surveys as one of Latin America’s most popular politicians.

And yet there are also important reasons why Bukelismo is unlikely to become a massively successful export. The evidence suggests that El Salvador’s statistics are under-reporting the local homicide rate (deaths in clashes with police or bodies found in mass graves, for example, are not counted in official data). Also, El Salvador has only two major gangs, not hundreds as in Colombia or Mexico. It is also the case that the country is paying a dramatically high social cost for safe streets. Around 90,000 people have been arrested since March 2022, mostly without trial; human rights groups say they have evidence of arbitrary detentions, disappearances, torture, and ill treatment. More than 5,000 prisoners are believed to have been wrongly arrested. El Salvador now has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, with those in jail estimated at 118,000 or around 1.9% of the entire population, according to US-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW). The state of emergency appears to have become a permanent component of government policy. To put it bluntly, Bukelismo succeeds at least in part because it is applied by a police state. That is not to say that democracies cannot learn from El Salvador’s experience, but the struggle to fight crime while protecting civil liberties will remain complex.

Turning back to the new governments we have been discussing in this report, it is evident that Colombia is one of the most consequential. The country has one of the biggest criminal violence problems in the region (its current homicide rate is among the highest). It is strategically located, linking illicit drug flows from the Andean region through Central America and Mexico into the US. Since August Colombia has been ruled by a true “outsider” president who is ideologically aligned with his US counterpart Donald Trump. This comes at a time when Trump has revived the interventionist Monroe Doctrine.

The outlook for Colombia is mixed. After only weeks in office there has been a significant increase in violence, which was to be expected because of the new president’s tough rhetoric and his instructions to the military to engage the cartels. This increased violence could be a necessary and temporary stage in reasserting territorial control, which over time could stabilise the security situation and reduce the death rate. The danger however is that such an outcome might not happen, with Colombia, under an inexperienced president, instead following the unhappy Mexican example of 2006 and beyond: militarisation and escalation.

The four cases we have looked at – Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, and Peru – are also examples of how priorities shift during the electoral cycle. In the early stages of elections, candidates highlight the problem of crime and security in a simplistic fashion to a receptive electorate. In significant part this is performative, with the issue often presented in emotive terms. Between winning the elections and taking office these policies and promises then begin to be stripped down and made more realistic. During a president’s first 100 days in office that process continues; it is often only after this point that it becomes clear whether congress will support new legislation.

We have already seen some examples. In Chile, President Kast began by promising the immediate forced deportation of over 300,000 undocumented migrants. But in the face of such a complex and costly task the president has backtracked, saying he had only been speaking hypothetically and that migrants would instead be asked to leave Chile “voluntarily”.  In Peru, new President Fujimori has promised further militarisation, including putting the army in control of prisons, but the funding is yet to be put in place. There is also a danger that the security agenda in Peru will be sidetracked by the new president’s low popularity ratings and a sense that on security issues, she is only offering “more of the same”.  In Costa Rica, President Fernández faces a sidetrack issue – her pursuit of a hardline security policy may draw her into a politically damaging conflict with the judiciary.

Overall, in these four countries, presidential promises of early wins in the battle against crime will be hard to deliver. For a limited initial period, voters will give them the benefit of the doubt. A performative ‘mano dura’ approach will work with some segments of opinion, but in the absence of real improvements backed by evidence, the new governments will lose a degree of credibility and popularity because of their handling of crime and security.

Of our ‘small and successful’ country group composed of Costa Rica, Panama, and Uruguay, Uruguay did best of the three in the 2017 Democracy Index prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), coming in 18^th out of 167 countries (ahead of the United States which was ranked equal 21^st with Italy). Uruguay was ranked as a “full democracy”. This category is defined as gathering those nations where civil liberties and basic political freedoms are not only respected but reinforced by a political culture conducive to the thriving of democratic principles. These countries have governmental checks and balances, an independent judiciary, adequately functioning governments, and a diverse and independent media. Uruguay got its highest scores for electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, and the functioning of government. Its weaker areas were political culture and political participation.

Through much of the nineteenth century Uruguay experienced recurring civil wars which pitted rural against urban power groups. In the twentieth century a more stable political system came into being, with peaceful co-existence between the rural interests, represented by the Partido Nacional (or Blancos) and a more urban middle class, represented by the Colorado party. The Colorados successfully introduced basic features of a welfare state. While Uruguay benefited from strong economic growth and import substitution associated with the two world wars, its economy remained largely dependent on beef and wool exports. The prices of these commodities stagnated in the 1950s and 1960s, leading to a period of economic decline and eventually triggering a political crisis in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Amid left-wing guerrilla activity the armed forces took power in 1973 and imposed a repressive dictatorship which remained in office until 1985. Since then the country has returned to its democratic ‘norm’. There have been seven successive elected administrations over a period of 33 years.

In this uninterrupted democratic period there have been two significant changes. First, the two party system, based on alternation between Blancos and Colorados, has been modified with the appearance of a strong left-wing coalition, known as the Frente Amplio (FA), which has ruled the country since 2005 – a total of 13 years. The FA has in fact been a moderate, centre-left force, which has introduced a number of market-friendly reforms. Second, the country is much less dependent on beef and wool prices than in the past: the economy has diversified in terms of overall trade and domestic sectors of activity, benefiting from the construction of large paper and pulp plants but also from the rapid expansion of software companies (including the gaming industry) and other services. By one reckoning Uruguay now has a US$1.2bn IT industry with 700 tech companies exporting software across 52 different markets.