This Week In Latin America

Venezuela’s supreme court gives Maduro pre-electoral boost

Venezuela’s supreme court of justice (TSJ) has issued two rulings in the last two weeks which are likely to have a significant influence on the legislative elections on 6 December. On 5 August the opposition coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) expelled the traditional right-wing Comité de Organización Polٕítica Electoral Independiente (Copei) from its ranks after the TSJ imposed a new Copei leadership committee days earlier which the MUD leadership claimed would act like “a Trojan horse” for the “regime”. Then, on 7 August, the TSJ rejected a suit to force the central bank (BCV) to make inflation figures public. Since inflation began spiralling out of control (even by Venezuelan standards) last February, the BCV has stopped publishing figures which, given that wage increases are far from keeping pace, could have reduced support for the government led by President Nicolás Maduro as elections approach.

Peru’s Humala faces complex final year in power

tenure. When Humala took office on 28 July 2011 there was a visceral fear among the private sector and business community that he would abandon his conciliatory rhetoric, revert to his nationalist roots and set Peru on the path taken by Venezuela. Instead, Humala pursued an agenda of free trade and fiscal rectitude, shedding his leftist allies who stood aghast as he used his final state-of-the-nation address to congress four years later to lay claim to the legacy of Peru’s first great social reformer. Humala, whose political inexperience has been exposed in his dealings with congress, seldom gets credit for his achievements, especially against Sendero Luminoso (SL) and the illegal drug trade, but this is a big claim. The prospect of enhancing his ‘legacy’ is also bleak as the political opposition assumes control of the legislature.

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.

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.