Mexico & Central America News and Discussions

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caltrek
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Thousands Protest Against Bukele Government in El Salvador
by Marcos Aleman
September 16, 2021

https://www.latinorebels.com/2021/09/16/bukeleprotests/

Introduction:
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Thousands of people gathered in El Salvador’s capital Wednesday for the first mass march against President Nayib Bukele, who protesters say has concentrated too much power, weakened the independence of the courts and may seek re-election.

Some marchers are also protesting the controversial decision by Bukele’s government to make the cryptocurrency Bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador, the first country to do so. Officials rolled out a digital wallet known as the “Chivo” one week ago, but the system has been down frequently for maintenance.

Some marchers wore T-shirts that read “NO To Bitcoin.” A few demonstrators vandalized the special ATM machines set up to handle Bitcoin transactions, but which have been inoperable anyway for much of the week. The cubicle housing one ATM machine was destroyed.

“They say the ‘vandalism’ was the work of ‘infiltrators,’ but there has been vandalism in ALL their demonstrations,” Bukele wrote in his Twitter account. “And why weren’t there any shouts of ‘stop,’ or ‘Don’t do that?’”

The populist president elected in 2019 has maintained high popularity with his vows to stamp out corruption that was rampant among the country’s traditional parties. But some Salvadorans say he is becoming “a dictator” and Wednesday’s march was the first large protest against his government.
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caltrek
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Honduras Struggles On
by W. T. Whitney
October 13, 2021

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/13 ... -honduras/

Extract:
(Counterpunch) For most Hondurans, who are treated as if they were disposable, capitalism has its downside.

Honduras’s poverty rate is 70%, up from 59.3% in 2019. Of formally employed workers, 70% work intermittently; 82.6% of Honduran workers participate in the informal sector. The Covid-19 pandemic led to more than 50,000 businesses closing and almost half a million Hondurans losing their jobs. Some 30,000 small businesses disappeared in 2020 owing to floods caused by hurricanes.

Violence at the hands of criminal gangs, narcotraffickers, and the police is pervasive and usually goes unpunished. Victims are rival gang members, political activists, journalists, members of the LGBT community, and miscellaneous young people. According to insightcrime.org, Honduras was Latin America’s third most violent country in 2019 and a year later it registered the region’s third highest murder rate. Says Reuters: “Honduras has become a sophisticated state-sponsored narco-empire servicing Colombian cartels.”

…according to Reuters, severe drought over five years has decimated staple crops [and] … Nearly half a million Hondurans, many of them small farmers, are struggling to put food on the table.” The UN humanitarian affairs agency OCHA reports that as of February 2021, “The severity of acute food insecurity in Honduras has reached unprecedented levels.”
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U.S. and Mexico to Take a More ‘Holistic’ Approach to Public Safety
by Cody Copeland
October 26, 2021

https://www.courthousenews.com/us-and-m ... ic-safety/

Introduction:
MEXICO CITY (Courthouse News) — High-ranking U.S. and Mexican officials met for the first time in years this month to discuss a fresh, “holistic” approach to dealing with the public security issues that affect both countries.

Announced in a joint statement issued by the White House and the administration of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the proposed “United States-Mexico Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities” aims to tackle problems both old and new.

Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said in his remarks on the High-Level Security Dialogue (HLSD) he conducted with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other high-ranking U.S. officials that the two countries are officially “leaving the Mérida Initiative behind” and looking forward to new solutions.

Signed in 2008, the Mérida Initiative aimed to combat drug trafficking and violence in Mexico under a philosophy of “shared responsibility” for the problems. But while the Mérida Initiative made great strides in collaboration between the two countries — especially with respect to information sharing — the fact remains that the problems of drug addiction in the United States and drug violence in Mexico have only grown worse since its inception.

The Congressional Research Service notes the initiative’s “kingpin strategy” of taking out cartel leaders only served to fracture criminal organizations, resulting in the Hydra effect of lower-level drug capos vying for the power vacuums at the top.
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Bukele’s Party Cloned in Guatemala
October 26, 2021

https://www.latinorebels.com/2021/10/26 ... guatemala/

Extract:
(Latino Rebels) Central America, in Brief: Regional expansion of the Salvadoran president’s political project seems to have started. Relatives of a Guatemalan publicist and partner with Nayib Bukele in launching multiple businesses began enrolling the political party Nuevas Ideas in Guatemala last July.

Morazán’s Dream

José Luis Araneda Cintrón, a 27-year-old Guatemalan lawyer, began the process before Guatemala’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal on July 2 to found a political party called “Nuevas Ideas,” the same name as that of President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. The new party’s cyan logo is identical to that of the Salvadoran party.

Araneda is the nephew of Pedro Andrés García Manzo Méndez, a Guatemalan publicist who founded two companies in 2005 and 2006 with Bukele and Ernesto Castro, Bukele’s former private secretary and current president of the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly, and a third only with Castro. García Manzo’s sister —Araneda’s mother— is also a member of the executive board of Nuevas Ideas Guatemala.

García Manzo is a businessman with a long track record in Guatemala and El Salvador. In Guatemala, he has for years managed businesses in digital marketing, event production, and restaurant purveyance. In El Salvador, he founded an event production company with Bukele and Castro in 2005. The next year, the three founded a business to operate restaurants, bars, and nightclubs, while García Manzo and Castro also opened a general merchandising company.

The Bukele administration wrote in September 2020 that it would look to “convert Central America into a common homeland.” The executive branch wrote in a press release that Vice President Félix Ulloa will present the draft of an agreement in 2024 to “create the Central American Union,” and that the Salvadoran government would begin studying unification projects including the creation of a common Central American passport.
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At Odds With Cuba’s ‘Myth’
by Patricia Sulbarán
October 26, 2021

https://www.latinousa.org/2021/10/26/cubasmyth/

Introduction:
(Latino USA) Carolina Barrero didn’t know that returning to Cuba after living abroad for years to join a protest movement would mean that she would witness the largest demonstrations the island had seen in decades.

“When we went to sleep on the 10th of July, no one could imagine what would happen the next day,” the young art historian remembered.

The morning of July 11th, dozens of videos started to circulate on social media, showing Cubans shouting “Abajo el comunismo” (“down communism”), protesting in front of the Communist Party affiliate offices all across the island and expressing their frustrations about a “collapsed” healthcare system, power outages and food shortages amid a global pandemic. Overall, protesters demanded change from a one-party government that has ruled for over 60 years.

The government rapidly deployed its security forces to disperse the crowds. A protester named Diubis Tejeda died in Havana after getting shot by a police officer, according to the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH, in Spanish).
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Daniel Ortega Set to Secure Re-Election in Nicaragua
November 8, 2021

https://www.latinorebels.com/2021/11/08 ... elections/

Introduction:
(Latino Rebels) NICARAGUA: Daniel Ortega sought his fourth presidential term in Sunday’s Nicaraguan elections. With more well-known challengers sitting in jail, Ortega stood a greater chance of winning. Polls closed at 6 p.m. local time with historically low turnouts as expected.

Since May, Ortega has ordered police to arrest dozens of opposition leaders including business leaders, seven presidential candidates, journalists, and old colleagues.

The Biden administration responded recently by calling the election a sham —and will prepare further sanctions against Nicaragua after the election results determine Ortega the winner. President Joe Biden has made requests to the Nicaraguan president to restore democracy and release detained opposition figures.

U.S. State Department officials said they would be cautious in their efforts to place sanctions and said that they’ll consider not harming sectors of the economy that “might impact the population.”

Sunday’s election will decide who takes the Nicaraguan presidency for the next five years. Forty-four million Nicaraguan citizens aged 16 and above were eligible to vote.
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Planned Opposition Protests in Cuba Flop
November 22, 2021

https://www.latinorebels.com/2021/11/22 ... otestflop/

Introduction:
(Latino Rebels) CUBA: Anti-government protests planned for last Monday by online group Archipiélago failed to materialize. The group cited the heavy police presence in the streets as their reason for remaining at home.

Videos circulating on social media show that counter-protesters also gathered outside the homes of lead organizers chanting revolutionary slogans in support of the government.

Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez called the protests an “absolute failure” in an interview on Tuesday. He also criticized U.S. President Joe Biden for not yet addressing the embargo and continuing with Trump-era policies that have exacerbated the country’s shortage of basic goods.

The administration has repeatedly accused the U.S. government of helping to organize the protest in order to destabilize the island.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan released a statement on Monday condemning what he described as the Cuban government’s “attempt to silence the voice of Cuban people as they clamor for change.”
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Queen congratulates Barbados as it becomes a republic

Tue 30 Nov 2021 00.01 GMT

As Barbados removes the Queen as its head of state and becomes a republic, the monarch has sent her congratulations on the nation’s “momentous” day.

Prince Charles arrived on the Caribbean island on Sunday to join the inauguration ceremony of the president-elect, Sandra Mason, who replaces the Queen as head of state overnight as Barbados sheds the vestiges of a colonial system stretching back 400 years.

In a message to Mason, the Queen wished all Barbadians happiness, peace and prosperity in the future.

She said: “On this significant occasion and your assumption of office as the first president of Barbados, I extend my congratulations to you and all Barbadians.

“I first visited your beautiful country on the eve of independence in early 1966, and I am very pleased that my son is with you today. Since then, the people of Barbados have held a special place in my heart; it is a country rightly proud of its vibrant culture, its sporting prowess, and its natural beauty, that attracts visitors from all over the world, including many people from the United Kingdom.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... a-republic


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U.S. Progressive Caucus Hails Honduran Election as Chance for 'New Chapter' in Relations
by Brett Wilkins
December 3, 2021

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/ ... -relations

Introduction:
(Common Dreams) Calling the victory of Honduran President-elect Xiomara Castro "an opportunity for a new chapter in U.S.-Honduras relations," Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal on Friday congratulated the first woman and socialist to be elected leader of the Central American nation long plagued by American subversion of democracy.

Castro, a political activist and the wife of former Honduran President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya, won last week's presidential election by more than 15 points over right-wing Tegucigalpa Mayor Nasry Asfura.

Jayapal (D-Wash.) said in a statement that she hopes this new phase of bilateral relations is "one based on mutual respect, support for democracy, and equitable development."

"We encourage the Biden administration to use this opportunity to make a clean break with previous presidential administrations, which worked to ensure that the 2009 coup d'état succeeded, legitimized the deeply flawed elections in 2009, 2013, and 2017, and pushed policies that have resulted in surges in Honduran insecurity, poverty, mass migration, and organized crime," the congresswoman added.

Democratically elected in 2005, Zelaya challenged Honduras' status as a U.S. client state while spurning the neoliberal economic policies of his oligarchic predecessors. In just three years in office, he implemented policies including an 80% minimum wage hike, universal free education, free school lunches for 1.6 million children, free electricity for low-income households, and land reforms including government subsidies for poor farmers.
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Nicaragua Ends Relations with Taiwan in Diplomatic Victory for China
by Karol Suarez, Isa Soares and Ben Westcott
December 10, 2021

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/09/americas ... index.html

Introduction:
(CNN) Nicaragua's government has broken off diplomatic relations with Taiwan and embraced Beijing, declaring "there is only one China in the world."

The Nicaraguan announcement now leaves a little more than a dozen countries that maintain official diplomatic relations with self-ruled Taiwan, including fellow Central American nations Honduras and Guatemala.

"The People's Republic of China is the only legitimate government representing all of China and Taiwan is an undoubted part of the Chinese territory," Nicaragua's Foreign Minister Denis Moncada said in a televised announcement from capital city Managua on Thursday.

"The government of the Republic of Nicaragua breaks diplomatic relations with Taiwan as of today and stopped having any contact or official relationship," he said.
Further Extract:
Honduran President-elect Xiomara Castro has publicly floated the idea of ditching her country's diplomatic ties with Taipei, leading to a concerted effort by President Tsai Ing-wen and her government to solidify ties with the Central American nation.
caltrek's comment: I fear that the devotion to capitalism that the U.S. has shown in the past, even at the expense of democracy, has thrown the door wide open to China. The end result may very well be that, in the end, we will have neither capitalism or democracy.

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