This Week In Latin America

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.

Pope upstaged by historic Havana meeting

The visit of Pope Francis to Cuba and the US this week had been eagerly anticipated ever since it emerged last December that he had played a pivotal role in the diplomatic rapprochement between two countries bitterly opposed for over half a century. But even so, with three papal visits in the last 17 years, the more momentous event in Havana came the day after Pope Francis departed for the US when Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos met the leader of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) guerrillas. A handshake between Santos and ‘Timochenko’ (Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri) seemed as unlikely as that between Cuban President Raúl Castro and his US peer Barack Obama but, together with the announcement of the most significant breakthrough in the annals of any peace process with the Farc, it paves the way for the resolution of the hemisphere’s other great intractable dispute.

Maduro pursues aggressive tactics ahead of Venezuelan elections

Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro appears to be playing a high-stakes game which could have profound repercussions. If it is hard not to view Maduro’s escalation of diplomatic tension with Colombia through the prism of December’s legislative elections, it is even more difficult not to see the timing of the prison sentence handed down last week to one of the country’s most prominent opposition politicians, Leopoldo López, as forming part of an electoral calculation by the beleaguered Bolivarian government.

A new era for Guatemala?

The resignation of Guatemala’s President Otto Pérez Molina on 3 September amid corruption allegations, three days before the staging of general elections, led to predictions of a new era of accountability and a sign that the notorious impunity afflicting the country would no longer be tolerated. It remains unlikely, however, that the winner of the 25 October presidential run-off between the victor in the first round, the ‘outsider’ and anti-establishment candidate, Jimmy Morales, and his as-yet-unde- fined rival will be able to live up to these heady expectations.

Confrontation between Colombia and Venezuela escalates as cross-border migration continues

The crisis triggered by the closure of a stretch of Venezuela’s border with Colombia by Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro – invoking the need to act against smuggling and ‘paramilitarism’ – has worsened. Deportations of Colombians and the flight of many more in fear have continued to increase, and Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos has failed to get a hearing in the Organization of American States (OAS). While Santos seeks other avenues, Maduro has been raising the stakes.