welcome home foreign policyOverview of Latin America.
This week's highlights: MexicoLeading presidential candidates hold their first debate, Elon Musk is under investigation Braziland how the Falklands War caused the explosion. argentinian rock.
Mexico's main presidential candidates took part last Sunday in their first debate ahead of the June 2nd general election. Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has a large lead in opinion polls in the race to replace outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. She will be followed by former senator Xocitl Gálvez, who represents a pro-market opposition coalition, and Jorge Álvarez Maínez, who represents a small centrist party.
López Obrador defies easy ideological categorization. He is popular among Mexico's poor and claims to be a leftist. But he also adopted economic austerity policies and empowered the military. Mr. Sheinbaum, Mr. Gálvez's protégé and chosen successor, is primarily running the company with an emphasis on continuity, although Mr. Gálvez has argued for a smaller role for the state in Mexico's economy. (President López Obrador expanded the role of the Mexican government in the energy sector.)
Mr. Galvez also favors major changes in security policy. At the beginning of her appearance on the debate, she said she dreams of a “Mexico that ends violence.” Surveys show that violence and insecurity are top election concerns for Mexican voters. When López Obrador took office in 2018, he promised to demilitarize security forces and de-escalate conflicts with drug gangs, a move he called “hugs, not bullets.” But he definitely did the opposite.
López Obrador has often lashed out at those who criticize his security policies, to the chagrin of many nongovernmental organizations and researchers. Now the Mexican has an opportunity to publicly assess his approach.
During his presidency, López Obrador cut funding from local police forces and abolished Mexico's federal police force. Instead, he created a nationwide security force called the National Guard, made up of former soldiers. He then controversially transferred the National Guard from civilian to military control. Meanwhile, Falco Ernst, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said the government is carefully communicating to criminal groups that it wants them to reduce visible violence, such as gunfights on highways. Still, my anxiety remained.
Scheinbaum offers a different approach. While it's dangerous to directly criticize López Obrador's record, as she relies on the support of his base to get elected, her public comments and written platform suggest that Mexico needs change. It shows that she believes that. The election campaign itself has been marked by a series of killings of local candidates. This could be the worst death toll in Mexico's history.
Ernst said the major camps are “becoming much more specific” in their security proposals than in past elections. foreign policy. In doing so, Sheinbaum and Gálvez noted that many Mexicans continue to face high levels of violence, even though government statistics show that homicides have declined across the country for three years in a row. I admit it.
Sheinbaum and Galvez say they will re-empower local police and increase their investigative capabilities. Sheinbaum talked about redirecting the National Guard's tactics to less confrontational community policing, while Galvez said he would use the military to fight organized crime but would demilitarize the National Guard more generally. Ta.
Despite the proposals of leading candidates, many Mexican security experts remain unconvinced that real change is afoot. As Iberoamerican University historian Marisol Ochoa said on Tuesday's radio show, the candidates' proposed changes “lack substance as to how and why they would be changed.” Ta.
Ochoa's university is part of a civil society coalition that has launched a national call for homicide reduction programs in the next administration.of the Union Framework This includes building reliable crime databases and implementing evidence-based crime reduction strategies such as strict arms control.
Future presidential debates are expected to give more airtime to security policy issues, but they were only briefly discussed Sunday. As the topic becomes more prominent during the campaign, Ochoa's colleague Ernesto López Portillo, a security expert at the Iberoamerican University, says Mexicans are resisting the urge to normalize the level of violence around them. , argued that they should instead engage in policy debates.
Nothing will change “without a social awakening,” López Portillo wrote on X.
Friday, April 12th: The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States held an emergency meeting regarding the arrest of former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glass.
From Friday, April 12th to Monday, April 22nd: Venezuela continues to host the latest round of peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the rebel National Liberation Army.
Saturday, April 13th: Argentina's President Javier Millay meets with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in Austin, Texas.
From Tuesday, April 16th to Wednesday, April 17th: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visits Colombia.
Musk is under investigation. On Sunday, technology mogul Elon Musk was added to Brazil's ongoing Supreme Court investigation into domestic disinformation. The move follows Musk's comments about lifting court-ordered bans on certain X accounts.
It was not immediately clear which account Musk was referring to, but Brazilian authorities have used false information in recent years to threaten Supreme Court justices and discredit the country's October 2022 presidential election. It ordered the suspension of accounts that shared messages that spread the word.
Musk described the ban as “censorship” and overreach by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. But Brazil is not the United States. The country's legal framework gives authorities more leeway to restrict speech if it meets criteria for anti-democratic behavior.
Nicaragua vs Germany. Hearings in Nicaragua's lawsuit against Germany over arms deliveries to Israel began on Monday at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Nicaragua believes that such arms deliveries are inciting genocide, and that the scope of ICJ oversight of actions in the Gaza Strip will expand to include not only countries that deploy weapons but also countries that supply them. claims.
Germany is Israel's second largest arms supplier after the United States. However, unlike Washington, Berlin is under the jurisdiction of the ICJ. Nicaragua's move reflects the long-term relationship between Nicaraguans and Palestinians. Before overthrowing the Somoza dictatorship, President Daniel Ortega's ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front received training from the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Germany on Tuesday rejected Nicaragua's accusations as “grossly biased” and said the Holocaust explains why Israel's security is at the core of Germany's foreign policy. The head of the legal affairs department at Germany's foreign ministry said Germany was “doing everything in its power to fulfill its responsibilities towards both Israel and Palestine.”
Ortega's own human rights record is deeply flawed. The regime has long suppressed opposition through arbitrary detentions and crackdowns on protests. His recent targets include the Catholic Church and Miss Universe 2023.
A man rides a bicycle next to a mural commemorating the Falklands War, seen in Buenos Aires on March 21, 2022.Juan Mavromata/AFP via Getty Images
Thatcher's musical legacy. The conflict, known as the Falklands War in English-speaking countries and the Malvinas War in Argentina, began 42 years ago this month. In April 1982, Argentina launched a military operation against the British Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, which Buenos Aires claimed as its territory. After more than two months of fighting, the British won and the Argentine forces withdrew. Millais said last week that she wants the island back.
The war left a deep cultural legacy in Argentina, and the Argentine government banned radio stations from playing English music during the conflict. At the time, Argentina was ruled by a military junta that was unfriendly to the rocker counterculture. The ban brought Argentine rock out of the underground and created a music boom that reverberated across the continent for decades.
“Various artists who were censored under the dictatorship have instead become protagonists,” music critic Carlos Ioña Pratt wrote in Tennessee.
Which Argentine rocker released his first solo album around the time of the Falklands War?
Fito Paes
alex laura
Victor Hara
Raul Seixas
That album is Dell'63released in 1984.
Soldiers guard the Mexican Embassy in Quito, Ecuador on April 5.Rodrigo Buendia/AFP via Getty Images
Last Friday, Ecuadorian police raided the Mexican Embassy in Quito and arrested former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Grasz, who had taken shelter inside the building. Glass was convicted of corruption in Ecuador in 2017 but was recently granted diplomatic asylum by Mexico.
The attack quickly sparked a global backlash. Latin American countries, the United States and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres condemned Ecuadorian authorities' violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which states that no country can force access to another country's embassy.
Mexico took further steps and withdrew its diplomatic corps from Ecuador. The Mexican government announced Thursday that it has filed a lawsuit against Ecuador at the ICJ.
The raid to arrest Glass appears to be part of Ecuadorian President Daniel Novoa's tough-on-crime strategy. But international law experts said Mexico was also circumventing diplomatic norms. The Latin American Convention on Diplomatic Asylum, known as the Caracas Convention, provides that protection is not granted to people convicted of common crimes.
An Organization of American States (OAS) resolution passed on Wednesday acknowledged these contradictions in the Ecuador-Mexico conflict, condemning Ecuador's actions and stating that the embassy “must not be used in a manner that is incompatible with the functions of the mission.” he pointed out.
Pleas by the OAS, the United Nations, and other groups do not seem to immediately ease tensions between Mexico and Ecuador. President López Obrador appears to be seizing an opportunity to boost nationalist sentiment as Mexico's elections approach.
