 |
Join Us    |
Member Area
We Recommend
Panama assumes Sica presidency; pledges focus on security
On 29 June, Panama’s President Juan Carlos Varela declared that, as the new six-month pro-tempore president of the Central American integration system (Sica), Panama would prioritise security.
Brazil’s Temer charged with corruption
This week, President Michel Temer became the first sitting Brazilian head of state to face criminal charges since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985. In an indictment filed at Brazil’s supreme court (STF) on 26 June, the prosecutor-general, Rodrigo Janot, accused Temer of passive corruption. But Brazil’s embattled President, who narrowly escaped impeachment from another court (the supreme electoral tribunal [TSE]) last month, is determined to remain in office. “I do not know how God appointed me here [to the presidency]. But if he gave me a difficult task, it was for me to complete it… I won’t let them accuse me of crimes I did not commit,” declared a defiant Temer. The case now passes to the federal congress, which will decide his fate.
Mexico’s inflation on the rise: something to worry about?
Mexico’s annual inflation rate rose to 6.17% in May, the highest in over eight years. On 18 May, before the inflation data was released, the Banco de Mexico (Banxico, central bank) had again tightened interest rates, raising the benchmark rate by 25bps to 6.75%. Analysts are divided as to whether this is part of a worrying vicious circle or whether it is no more than a passing spike in an economy that is otherwise showing signs of resilience.
Northern Triangle: new security initiatives?
The Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America, co-sponsored by the United States and Mexico, was held in Miami from 15-16 June, and designed to pull together a coordinated strategy against crime, drug trafficking, and illegal immigration flows coming out of the ‘Northern Triangle’ countries of Central America (El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala). Here we look at what was said and whether it will make a difference.
Problems in the military may edge Venezuela to a tipping point
Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz continues to rail against the government led by President Nicolás Maduro, telling Peru’s leading daily, El Comercio, on 26 June that Venezuela was no longer a State of law, but a police state, and accusing the Bolivarian intelligence agency Sebin of dictating orders to a judiciary now subjugated to “a repressive police logic”. “Here [in Venezuela], the cart is before the horses”, she quipped, adding that the supreme court (TSJ) had moved to erect “a totalitarian court that interprets and manipulates the constitution in line with its political interests”.
We Recommend
Member Area
CONTACT
You may contact us via our online contact form, or write to us at:
LatinNews
Intelligence Research Ltd.
Hamilton House, Fourth Floor
Mabledon Place
Bloomsbury
London
WC1H 9BB
UK
Phone: +44 (0)203 695 2790