This Week In Latin America

Mexico: marijuana, Castro and the US

It is not very long ago that the US federal administration would have expressed displeasure at two significant developments south of the Rio Grande this week. On 4 November Mexico’s supreme court of justice [SCJN] handed down a landmark ruling that paves the way for the legalisation of marijuana; the very next day Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto received his Cuban peer Raúl Castro for a three-day official visit, his first since taking over from his brother Fidel in 2006, and proceeded to heap praise on the Cuban government’s achievements while making no reference to anti-democratic and human rights concerns. It would be a mistake to view either development entirely through the prism of US-Mexico relations, but there is no doubt that the legalisation of marijuana in certain US states and the US rapprochement with Cuba played a part.

Not so united: the electoral hangover in Colombia’s ruling coalition

The political fallout from Colombia’s regional elections on 25 October could create some serious difficulties for President Juan Manuel Santos in the remaining three years of his mandate. The Unidad Nacional coalition undergirding his government has looked anything but united during the election post mortem. Rather the results of the elections have exposed a clear rift between the Partido de la U (PU) and the Partido Liberal (PL) on the one hand, and Cambio Radical (CR), led by Vice-President Germán Vargas Lleras, on the other hand. Vargas Lleras downplayed internal coalition divisions but the leaders of the PU and PL have been forthright in their criticism, alleging that he misused his position to gain an early advantage in the race to succeed Santos in 2018.

Macri in the lead ahead of second round

Few statistics in Argentina are reliable. Ahead of the 25 October first round election, opinion polls indicated that Daniel Scioli, the candidate of the ruling Frente para la Victoria (FPV, Kirchneristas) faction of the Partido Justicialista (PJ, Peronists), was almost ten points clear of his nearest rival, Mauricio Macri, from the centre-right Cambiemos coalition. In fact, the difference turned out to be a little over 2%. Hopes for an outright victory for the Kirchnerista candidate evaporated quickly on the evening of 25 October however. In the run-off due on 22 November, Macri now appears to have the edge.

Chile’s Bachelet launches campaign for new constitution

Chile’s political parties are beginning to get to grips with President Michelle Bachelet’s constitutional reform proposals, spelled out earlier this month. It looks like being a complicated process, going through various stages and lasting more than two years: not surprisingly perhaps, Chile’s political leaders are not rushing in with definitive opinions, but are trying to work out where their advantage may lie. The private sector has expressed serious misgivings about embarking on this project at a time of economic uncertainty.

Mexico’s government faces credibility challenge

Mexico’s federal government will wage a big battle for credibility on several fronts between now and 12 important gubernatorial elections next year. One of these fronts is human rights. This is attracting the most media coverage, not least because the government has invited a succession of high-profile international figures to Mexico to evaluate the country’s progress in this area, only to take issue with their findings. Another key front is corruption in state institutions and law enforcement bodies permitting the escape last July of the drug kingpin, Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera, from a maximum security prison. And then there is education. The pugnacious teachers’ union Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE) is staging national strikes as part of an attritional struggle to force the government to backtrack on its seminal education reform.

Lula and PMDB win influence in Brazilian cabinet reshuffle

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff conducted a cabinet reshuffle on 4 October which left the Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (PMDB) with seven ministries compared with the nine in the possession of the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT). Although the PT retains many of the key portfolios, including the massive, newly merged ministry of labour & social security, the PMDB will actually control the larger total budget: R$99bn (US$25.5bn) in the 2016 budget versus R$75.5bn. In this sense the PMDB was the winner in the reshuffle, as was former president Lula da Silva (2003-2011) whose advice Rousseff now appears to be heeding.