Development: On 24 August Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos said that his government was prepared to “firmly” defend the rights of all its nationals that live in Venezuela.
Significance: Santos’s comments came on the back of reports that hundreds of Colombian nationals have been forcibly...
Development: In an interview published on 23 August, Roberto Setubal, the president of Itaú Unibanco, the largest banking conglomerate in Brazil, warned against impeaching President Dilma Rousseff.
Significance: Setubal joins the list of notable Brazilian public figures who have positioned...
In the province of Buenos Aires, thousands have been forced to flee their homes due to floods. With around one third of the Argentine electorate based in the province, and just two months to go until the general elections, the natural disaster has unsurprisingly become an issue in the presidential...
The US circuit court of appeals for the District of Columbia in Washington ruled on 4 August that Ecuador should compensate the US oil company Chevron to the tune of US$106m (including interest), based on the US-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty (BIT) that came into effect in 1997. This would be...
Development: On 18 August Bolivia’s interior minister, Carlos Romero, announced that he will present a criminal complaint before the attorney general’s office against those responsible for the death of a police official in the municipality of Tacacoma, La Paz department, after clashes with local...
Development: On 17 August El Salvador’s attorney general’s office (FGR) reported that there had been 28 violent homicides across the country the previous day, with 11 people killed in shootouts between the security forces and the members of different local street gangs (maras).
Significance: The...
Development: Following the 14 August flag raising ceremony at the newly restored US embassy in Cuba, a new steering committee of US and Cuban officials will begin work in September with a mandate to discuss human rights and other sensitive matters, as the two countries work towards the...
After 11 weeks of torchlit marches by protesters incensed by revelations of institutional corruption in Honduras, a dialogue process is tentatively underway. The protest movement, named after Spain’s indignados (outraged), is demanding the establishment of an anti-impunity commission along the...
Chile’s foreign minister, Heraldo Muñoz, on 4 August said that “everything has a limit”, and accused the Bolivian government led by President Evo Morales of making “unjustified accusations”.
Muñoz was responding to comments made by Morales in an interview with the Bolivian national daily El...
Development: On 11 August Mexico’s foreign ministry (SRE) confirmed that the country’s new ambassador to the US will be Miguel Basáñez Ebergenyi, an academic with close political links to President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Significance: Surprisingly for such a key role, the position of Mexican...
Development: On 10 August Ecuador’s main indigenous organisation, Conaie, announced a nationwide “uprising” against the government led by President Rafael Correa.
Significance: Uprisings by Ecuador’s indigenous have toppled governments in the past. President Correa is more popular than his...
Development: At a meeting with her closest ministers on 9 August, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff decided to hold talks with the leaders of all her coalition allies this week in an attempt to avoid impeachment.
Significance: The political crisis in Brazil is deteriorating rapidly. Over the...
Development: On 7 August Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos gave a televised address to mark the end of the first year of his current four-year presidential term, in which he stated that while securing a peace deal with the country’s guerrillas remains the top priority for his government,...
Registration for legislative elections on 6 December got underway this week. While the government frontloaded its list of candidates with the First Lady Celia Flores, some cabinet heavyweights, singers and sportsmen, the national electoral council (CNE) rejected the application of María Corina...
Development: On 5 August Chuck Rosenberg, the acting head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), said that the escaped leader of the Sinaloa drug trafficking organisation (DTO), Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, was probably still in Mexico, and that the agency was stepping up its attempts to...
The fatal shooting of a young woman and two children last month by the Nicaragua’s national police (PN) in a botched counter-narcotics operation is only the latest incident to reignite concerns regarding the PN – previously one of Nicaragua’s most trusted institutions. With its response to...
Development: On 4 August allegations of murder and drug trafficking – along with the management of currency exchange rates – dominated Argentina’s political scene, with just five days to go ahead of the national primaries.
Significance: Almost everything Argentine politicians do for the rest of...
Development: On 3 August José Dirceu, the former cabinet chief of Brazil’s former president Lula da Silva (2003-2010), was arrested, accused of being the mastermind behind the corruption scandal at state-owned oil company Petrobras.
Significance: Dirceu’s arrest puts Lula, the ruling Partido dos...
Development: On 3 August HSBC Plc announced that it had sold its Brazilian division to Bradesco for US$5.2bn.
Significance: By purchasing HSBC, Bradesco now rivals Itaú Unibanco as the largest bank in Brazil. Its assets are now valued at R$1.193trn (US$348bn), compared with R$1.295trn for Itaú....
Sierra Oil Wins Round 1 Licences: Mexico’s Sierra Oil and Gas led the only consortium to win licences in the first phase of the country’s Round 1 hydrocarbons licensing auction, announced on 15 July. Sierra, in partnership with Talos Energy of the US and Premier Oil of the UK, was declared the...
