Weekly Report - 29 July 2021 (WR-21-30)

The swearing-in of Pedro Castillo as Peru’s new president on 28 July was different to other inaugurations in one important respect: he did not, as is customary, announce his new ministerial team.... Read More

A retired army captain and 10 alleged members of the dissident 33rd Front of the disbanded Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) have been charged in relation to last month’s attacks against President Iván Duque and a military base in Colombia’s far east.... Read More

Violence has once again erupted inside Ecuador’s overcrowded prison system.... Read More

With tumbling approval ratings and an increasingly weak political position, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro is taking steps to shore up his support in congress by strengthening the government’s ties with the ‘centrão’, the notoriously volatile and venal parliamentary bloc which began propping up the Bolsonaro administration last year.... Read More

After the unexpected results of presidential primaries held on 19 July, attention has now shifted to a three-way battle for nomination within the Unidad Constituyente (UC) coalition, formed by Chile’s traditional centre-left parties.... Read More

Midnight on Friday 23 July was the deadline for Argentine political parties and alliances to register their lists of candidates to take part in obligatory primaries (Paso) due on 12 September, ahead of mid-term congressional elections due on 14 November.... Read More

BRAZIL | Frosts affect coffee crops, send prices soaring.... Read More

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador may have said that his government wants to maintain good relations with the US and even boasted that he has a good rapport with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.... Read More

After it appeared that the coronavirus (Covid-19) epidemic in Mexico had subsided, the country is suffering a major new wave of infections.... Read More

International delegations were forced to cut short their attendance at the funeral of the late president Jovenel Moïse (2017-2021), which took place on 23 July in his hometown of Cap Haïtien, Haiti’s second largest city, after shots were fired and protests staged in the vicinity and on the roads from the capital Port-au-Prince.... Read More

The US government led by President Joe Biden last week slapped economic sanctions on Cuba’s defence minister, General Álvaro López Miera, and the Cuban interior ministry’s special national brigade, also known as the Boinas Negras (Black Berets).... Read More

El Salvador’s attorney general’s office has announced formal corruption charges against former president Salvador Sánchez Cerén (2014-2019) of the left-wing Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) and nine others who served under the FMLN government led by Mauricio Funes (2009-2014).... Read More

Thousands of Guatemalans have taken to the streets to demand the resignation of President Alejandro Giammattei and the attorney general, María Consuelo Porras, in connection with a corruption probe.... Read More

“This is the first time that this country will be governed by a peasant.”... Read More