The pro-government deputies approved in early January the tenth extension of martial law that allows the government, among other things, to hide information on public spending. The exception regime includes the suspension of the constitutional guarantees of Salvadorans and the use of the military in public security.
One week after the Chilean citizens overwhelmingly voted to reject the text of the new Magna Carta in the plebiscite on September 4 (62% to 38%), the leaders of the political parties in Chile, with the exception of the far-right Republican Party of Sebastián Katz, met to outline a new constitutional process. They agreed to designate a completely new body, elected by popular vote, in charge of drafting the new text, although the number of people that will integrate it is not yet known.
The images of the January 8 violent attacks against the governmental buildings in Brasília spread through international media and are still resounding today. Wearing the colors of the national flag and the beloved Brazilian football team, the mob of supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, stormed and vandalized the Federal Supreme Court, the National Congress’s building and the Planalto Presidential Palace, institutions that compose the Three Powers Plaza.
After being besieged relentlessly throughout his 16 months in office, Pedro Castillo was removed from the presidency on December 7 by Peru’s national Congress after he announced a gutting of the institutional order. Castillo’s attempt to dissolve Congress was followed just hours later by the move to “vacate” him, the third attempt during his term, and the first successful one.
Carefully treading a crossing of slippery stones strung across the shallow Rio Grande between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, trickles of migrants climbed up the embankment on the U.S. side.
Joining with others who had crossed from down river, the asylum seekers waited peacefully to surrender to U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. Watching the evolving ritual were a gaggle of Mexican journalists and local residents. A young man from Venezuela with one leg hopped around on crutches while a pair of municipal cops observed the drama from a parked truck. Standing atop the Mexican embankment, a young girl gazed across the narrow river at the forming line of asylum seekers of all ages, tears welling up in her sad eyes.
Two major developments can be inferred from the results of the November 8, 2022 mid-term elections in the United States. First, the voters did not punish Joe Biden after his first two years as president as the pre-election polls had predicted they would. Consequently, Donald Trump’s political standing has diminished along with the legitimacy of his leadership role in the Republican Party.
Nevada-based mining firm is suing Guatemala for more than $400 million, the first suit of its kind for the impoverished Central American country. The company contends that the Guatemalan government didn’t do enough to protect its investments in the country. But that’s news to my community and others who faced violent police repression when we nonviolently demonstrated to keep these mining operations from poisoning our health and water.
The results of the first round of the general elections in Brazil surprising everyone, given the numbers in the polls on voters’ intentions carried out by various institutes in the weeks prior to election day. In the Oct. 2 vote, former president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva almost made the 50% cut to win without a run-off, garnering 48.4% of the valid votes (57 million votes), but the surprise was that current president Jair Bolsonaro obtained 43, 2% of valid votes (51 million votes), a figure that far exceeded the projections in the polls up until the eve of the elections and demonstrated a degree of resilience and social penetration of the Brazilian extreme right that the progressive camp did not imagine existed.
The IX Summit of the Americas was on the wrong path from the very beginning. For the first time since its creation in 1994, this meeting in which all the leaders of the Americas meet triennially, was held a year late.
As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine moves through its second month, its unconcealable economic impact continues to grow at the global level.
