Briefings & Intelligence

El Salvador under siege as maras go on killing spree

El Salvador’s deteriorating public security situation is taking a sharp turn for the worse. In the course of 72 hours this week mara gang members murdered seven bus drivers and paralysed public transport in and around the capital San Salvador with an enforced strike, in order to ratchet up the pressure on the government led by President Salvador Sánchez Cerén. As the number of homicides has spiralled in recent months to levels not seen since the country’s brutal civil war (1980-1992), the government has refused to hold talks with the maras. It remains defiant. Sánchez Cerén is promising to pour more military on to the streets to support the police, while he and other senior officials in the ruling left-wing Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) are making increasingly wild claims of a multifaceted destabilisation campaign orchestrated by the main right- wing opposition Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Arena).

Rock-bottom approval ratings, an economy in recession and an increasingly hostile congress are not on their own sufficient to initiate impeachment proceedings against Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff. However, they make the conditions for such a process more likely. In another bad week for Rousseff, her mentor and predecessor, Lula da Silva (2003-2011), faced a criminal investigation; an opinion poll found just 7.7% of Brazilians approved of her administration; the government was forced to revise down its fiscal surplus target (with the economy now predicted to shrink by 1.49% this year), and the speaker of the federal lower chamber of congress, Eduardo Cunha, declared his open opposition to the executive.

Greece, seen from Latin America

Daring prison escape of Mexico’s ‘El Chapo’ leaves Peña Nieto reeling

The capture of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera, the leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug-trafficking organisation (DTO), in February 2014 was lauded as the most significant blow against drug-trafficking for over a decade, underpinning the credibility of President Enrique Peña Nieto. As such, Guzmán’s escape from maximum security prison at the weekend is a significant setback in the fight against drug-trafficking, and a sharp blow to Peña Nieto’s credibility and that of Mexico’s institutions.

With pressure mounting on Santos Farc backs off

Colombia’s armed conflict is not just being fought on the ground but in the head. And in the intense psychological war conducted over the course of the last week the guerrillas blinked first. The Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) announced that the unilateral ceasefire it suspended on 22 May would be revived for one month on 20 July. This in the wake of a plea from the ‘guarantor nations’ of the peace process for both sides to take urgent measures to de-escalate the conflict after President Juan Manuel Santos and the head of the government negotiating team in Cuba, Humberto de la Calle, stressed that Farc aggression over the last month had brought the prospect of the abandonment of the process closer than at any stage since it began in October 2012. Santos complemented his rhetoric with action, replacing the military high command with some of the most successful operational figures in the armed forces.

More symbolism than substance as Rousseff travels to US

“From now on, I hope that next time President Obama wants to know what is going on in Brazil, he will call me directly.” President Dilma Rousseff’s answer to the inevitable question about US-Brazil relations in the wake of spying revelations raised a smile from the US president. Almost two years have passed since Rousseff cancelled a trip to Washington following reports that the US had spied on her personal emails. But whereas in 2013, Rousseff could afford such a gesture, her position is much weaker now. From the US perspective, the relationship with Brazil is far from essential, though some of the praise lavished on Rousseff and her country suggest that Washington wants to ensure Brazil does not wander too far into China’s sphere of influence. Though the two presidents inked a number of agreements, most significantly on climate change, the real value of the visit was that it happened at all.