LatinNews Daily - 21 March 2024

On 20 March Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab announced the arrest of Henry Alviárez, the national coordinator for Vente Venezuela (VV) – the party of María Corina Machado, the chosen presidential candidate for the Venezuelan opposition coalition Plataforma Unitaria Democrática (PUD).... Read More

*The president of Bolivia’s state-owned hydrocarbons company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), Armin Dorgathen, has said that in 2023 sales of natural gas to Brazil, Argentina and the domestic market totalled US$2.37bn.... Read More

On 20 March the lawyers of Ronnie Lessa, who is accused of killing Rio de Janeiro city councillor Marielle Franco in 2018, sent a statement to the Brazilian press in which they announced they would step down as Lessa’s legal counsel and criticised the decision to sign a plea bargain, which was announced by authorities the day before.... Read More

*The monetary policy committee (Copom) of Brazil’s central bank (BCB) has lowered the country’s benchmark interest rate (Selic) to 10.75%, down from 11.25%.... Read More

On 20 March at least 15 people were killed in attacks around Haiti’s wealthy residential Port-au-Prince suburb Pétion-Ville, according to reports from local news outlets such as Le Nouvelliste.... Read More

*The International Monetary Fund (IMF) executive board has completed the fifth review under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangement for Suriname, allowing for an immediate purchase equivalent to US$62m, of which about US$25m would be for budget support.... Read More

On 20 March authorities in Mexico’s northern state of Sonora announced that Samuel ‘El Pía’ Ibarra Peralta, the leader of a local criminal group, had been killed.... Read More

*The Mexican branch of international NGO World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), UK-based climate action NGO WRAP, and Ellen Macarthur Foundation, a UK-based charity committed to creating a circular economy, have presented the Plastics Pact of Mexico (PPMX), a platform which it describes as the “first effort at a national level to coordinate and articulate the efforts of the private sector, academia, local government and organised civil society to reduce plastic pollution and accelerate the transition to a circular economy”.... Read More

On 20 March Argentina’s President Javier Milei nominated two candidates to fill vacant positions on the supreme court (CSJN).... Read More

*Argentina’s national statistics institute (Indec) has released the latest figures on economic activity, which show that the country’s GDP fell 1.4% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2023, dropping 1.9% in quarterly terms.... Read More