This Week In Latin America

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.

‘Zannini effect’ causes blue dollar to spike

To no-one’s surprise, Florencio Randazzo, Argentina’s interior and transport minister, dropped his bid for the presidency on 19 June. Randazzo’s decision, taken after a long meeting with President Cristina Fernández, means that the ruling Frente para la Victoria (FpV) can rally around a single candidate ahead of the October election: Daniel Scioli, the current governor of Buenos Aires province. Randazzo’s withdrawal was all but confirmed when Carlos Zannini, one of Fernández’s closest allies, accepted Scioli’s invitation to be his running mate. With the ultra-kirchnerista Zannini on the ticket, the price of the blue dollar soared as analysts anticipated a continuation of the government’s currency control policies in the event of a Scioli victory.

Ecuador’s Correa feels the heat over inheritance tax

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has challenged the political opposition to call a recall referendum on his mandate after more than a week of protests rather than resort to violence to oust him. This is a stock response from Correa: raise the stakes; categorise legitimate protests as a cover for a coup conspiracy; and divert attention away from one specific issue of discord to his whole record in government. Correa was sufficiently concerned, however, to suspend temporarily the issue which provided the catalyst for the protests: a bill to introduce a graded inheritance tax.

Mexico’s elections reaffirm PRI’s sway but shake status quo

Virtually all of Mexico’s political parties were able to dress up the 7 June federal legislative, state and municipal midterm elections as a victory, although the left-wing Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) required most spin to do so. Happiest will be the radical left-wing Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena), which shattered the PRD’s hegemony in the Distrito Federal (DF); and President Enrique Peña Nieto as the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and its allies retained control of the federal lower chamber of deputies. The PRI, however, suffered some humbling defeats at state level, foremost among which was the governorship of Nuevo León which fell to Jaime ‘El Bronco’ Rodríguez, the first victory ever by an independent candidate and one of several black eyes sustained by the political establishment.

Fifa scandal exposes extent of regional corruption

It is hard to think of a US action more popular in Latin America than the Department of Justice’s arraignment of top-ranking officials from the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa), the governing body of world football, last week. Of the 14 men named as defendants in the US-led investigation all bar two are citizens of Latin America and the Caribbean. Nowhere is the grim satisfaction among the region’s legion of football fans greater than in the two powerhouses of world football: Brazil and Argentina. Domestic probes into corruption in the game in both countries have failed to result in any of the game’s top-ranking administrators facing charges for the widespread corruption afflicting the sport here. That may now be about to change, with public tolerance of corruption in the region at an all-time low.

Is Argentina’s presidential election becoming a two-horse race?

The third-placed candidate in Argentina’s presidential election contest on 25 October, Sergio Massa, is losing ground to the two leading candidates, Daniel Scioli and Mauricio Macri, opinion surveys suggest. On 26 May, Humberto Zúccaro, the mayor of Pilar in the province of Buenos Aires, announced his decision to abandon Massa’s Frente Renovador (FR) and return to Scioli and President Cristina Fernández’s ruling Frente para la Victoria (FPV) - two rival factions in the Partido Justicialista (PJ, Peronist). The danger for Massa is that as he slips in the opinion polls, others may follow Zúccaro’s lead, jumping ship to either the FPV or Macri’s centre- right opposition party Propuesta Republicana (PRO).