LatinNews Daily - 18 September 2023

On 17 September Argentina’s traditional right-of-centre opposition Juntos por el Cambio (JxC) triumphed in the gubernatorial elections in the northern province of Chaco, unseating Jorge Capitanich, one of the foremost figures within Kirchnerismo.... Read More

On 17 September Colombia’s government began three days of talks with the Estado Mayor Central (EMC), an alliance of dissident units of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) guerrilla group, to discuss peace talks and a bilateral ceasefire.... Read More

* Peru’s central bank (BCRP) has lowered its GDP growth forecast for 2023 from 2.2% to 0.9%, citing supply shocks, low levels of business confidence, and challenging climatic conditions that it said are likely to affect agricultural production for the rest of the year.... Read More

On 16 September Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva attended the summit of the G77 group of developing economies and China in Havana, Cuba, where he also held bilateral talks with his Cuban counterpart Miguel Díaz-Canel.... Read More

* Brazil’s agriculture ministry has released the latest figures for agricultural exports, which showed that the country's exports totalled US$15.63bn in August, with agricultural products accounting for 50.4% of Brazil’s total monthly export value.... Read More

On 15 September President Nayib Bukele announced the start of ‘Phase Six’ of his Plan Control Territorial (TCP) security strategy, a multi-step initiative.... Read More

*The Dominican Republic’s minister of industry, trade and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), Víctor Bisonó, has announced that the government led by President Luis Abinader is seeking to implement an initiative enabling those Dominican traders affected by the recent closure of the border with Haiti as recently ordered by Abinader, to sell their products on the national market.... Read More

On 15 September US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that Ovidio Guzmán López – the son of the imprisoned Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera – had been extradited from Mexico to the US.... Read More

*Mexico’s agriculture & rural development ministry (Sader) has released figures which show that in the first seven months of 2023, the country’s agrifood (agriculture and agro-industrial) trade balance registered a surplus of US$5.79bn.... Read More

* Argentina’s government has said that it will appeal a recent ruling issued by Loretta Preska, a US judge from the Southern District of New York district court, ordering Argentina to pay US$16.1bn to minority shareholders of state-controlled oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) due to the government’s nationalisation of a majority stake in the firm in 2012.... Read More

Mexico: On 8 September Mexico’s government led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador accepted a request to review whether pilots at Aerotransportes Mas de Carga (Mas Air), a Mexico City-based airline that provides cargo transportation services, were being denied the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining.... Read More