Category Archives: Americas

Mexico’s Amlo says El Chapo ‘had the same power’ as past presidents

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López Obrador took a blow at his predecessors while claiming Mexico’s era of corruption is ‘gone to the garbage dump of history’

Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, closed out 2019 with a parting shot at his predecessors, saying the imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera had once wielded the same power as the country’s president.

In a video message from the southern city of Palenque on Wednesday, López Obrador recounted his administration’s successes in its first year and highlighted its challenges foremost surging violence.

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Brazilians on Bolsonaro’s first year: ‘If you disagree, you’re seen as a traitor’

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Six prominent voices from the arts, media, diplomacy and the Amazon give their views on the far-right president’s opening 12 months

It has been a year since a pro-gun, anti-indigenous far-right former army captain took power in Brazil and began sending shockwaves through the country’s government and society.

In those 12 months, Jair Bolsonaro – who is openly homophobic and allied to Brazil’s hardline religious right – has declared war on film-makers, journalists and the environment; put a conspiracy theorist in charge of the foreign service; and greenlit a new era of police repression and rainforest destruction.

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Spain orders Bolivian trio to leave as diplomatic row deepens

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Government in tit-for-tat retort after Jeanine Añez said she would expel diplomats over alleged plan to extract former Morales aide

The Spanish government has declared three Bolivian diplomats “personae non gratae” in a tit-for-tat move as a diplomatic spat deepened with Madrid’s former colony.

Related: Latin America's tumultuous year turns expectations on their head

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Are Mexican avocados the world’s new conflict commodity?

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The fruit’s global surge in popularity has fuelled exports and attracted violent cartels to the trade in ‘green gold’

The 19 mutilated bodies, nine hanging semi-naked from a bridge in the Mexican city of Uruapan, were initially thought to be the result of a clash between rival drug gangs. But the Jalisco New Generation cartel, which claimed the murders in August, is believed to be fighting for more than drugs. It wants dominance over the local avocado trade.

Mexico is the world’s biggest producer of avocados. Exports of the “green gold” from the state of Michoacán, which produces most of Mexico’s avocados, were worth $2.4bn last year.

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Protests, climate crisis and Ebola: a tumultuous 2019 – in pictures

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Around the world people took to the streets in pro-democracy protests, while extreme weather, disease and violence wreaked havoc in some of the most vulnerable communities. But amid disaster, new grassroots leaders came to the fore, women fought to claim their rights and radical treatments for diseases were trialled

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The power behind the thrones: 10 political movers and shakers who will shape 2020

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Some are trusted aides, others are fixers who work in the shadows. Often unelected and unaccountable, they all have the ear of national leaders

The role of Dominic Cummings in plotting and facilitating Boris Johnson’s drive for power has focused attention on the influence exerted by behind-the-scenes advisers and confidants who have the ear of prominent politicians.

Powerful men and women around the world all have personal counsellors, trusted aides and backroom mentors. Then there are the “insiders” – string-pullers, fixers and manipulators with ambitions of their own. Few become well-known, although Cummings’s notoriety is by no means exceptional.

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Brazil’s artists lead a chorus of resistance to Jair Bolsonaro

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As the president completes his first year in power, his opponents are finding their voice and fighting back

Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency was still a week away when Edu Krieger penned his first critique – a ballad lamenting the rise of Brazil’s incoming leader and lampooning him over the corruption allegations that continue to haunt his family.

“It’s important for us to counterattack with our art,” said the 45-year-old singer-songwriter who has since become a specialist in musical parodies of the populist provocateur.

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Mexican president Amlo calls on Bolivia to stop harassing diplomats

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Comments further stoked diplomatic row between Mexico and Bolivia, which has descended into personal insults

Mexico’s president has called on police in Bolivia to stop harrassing diplomats at his country’s embassy in La Paz and allow nine former officials holed up there – all allies of former leader Evo Morales – to seek asylum.

“The right to asylum has to be guaranteed,” Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at his daily press conference on Friday. “We hope they act sensibly and they don’t invade our diplomatic representation in Bolivia. Not even Pinochet did that.”

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Mexican police chief arrested in connection to Mormon family killings

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Nine women and children of US-Mexican origin were shot dead by suspected drug cartel hitmen last month

Mexican authorities have arrested a municipal police chief for his suspected links to the killing of three women and six children of US-Mexican origin in northern Mexico last month, local media and an official said on Friday.

Suspected drug cartel hitmen shot dead the nine women and children from families of Mormon origin in Sonora state on 4 November, sparking outrage in Mexico and the United States.

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Archaeologists discover remains of vast Mayan palace in Mexico

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Ancient building found 100 miles west of Cancùn estimated to be more than 1,000 years old

Archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered the remains of a vast Mayan palace over 1,000 years old in an ancient city about 100 miles west of the tourist hotspot of Cancún.

The building in Kulubá is 55 metres long, 15 metres wide and six metres high, and appears to have been made up of six rooms, said Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.

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Home Alone 2: Trump scene cut in Canada, angering supporters

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CBC removed president’s cameo in 2014 to save time, but Trump’s son says move is ‘pathetic’

Canada’s national broadcaster has riled Donald Trump’s conservative base by airing Christmas movie favourite Home Alone 2 without a scene involving the president.

The Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) says it removed Trump’s brief cameo – and eight minutes of the film in total – in 2014 to make room for commercials.

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Reasons to be fearful – the international news review of 2019

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This year world leaders struggled to manage the fallout from the erratic tenant in the White House – as China flexed its imperial muscles. We look back at the events that created the most turbulence

Click here for 2019’s reasons to be cheerful

A year of high anxiety was rendered more alarming by intensifying clashes of interest between world powers. As international cooperation declined, and nationalist agendas gathered strength, China, the US, Russia and Europe, and their respective allies, emulators and proxies, engaged in often dangerous competition.

The Chinese communist regime’s increasingly assertive behaviour at home and abroad, reflecting the authoritarian outlook of its paramount leader-for-life, Xi Jinping, produced head-on collisions with western countries, notably over Hong Kong, trade, technology and the repression of the Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjiang.

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Mexico releases Texas woman who tried to deliver Christmas gifts to migrants

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Authorities had arrested Anamichelle Castellano, who runs a not-for-profit, after finding ammunition in her car on Monday

A Texas woman has been allowed to leave Mexico after being detained while trying to deliver Christmas gifts to a sprawling refugee camp housing people waiting in limbo at the border for US court dates to deal with their asylum claims.

Relatives of Anamichelle Castellano say she was arrested by Mexican authorities Monday at a bridge crossing from Brownsville, Texas, to Matamoros, Mexico.

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Jair Bolsonaro: Brazilian president says he briefly lost memory after fall

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President’s office said Bolsonaro spent the night in the hospital and was discharged on Tuesday

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, said on Tuesday night that he briefly lost his memory after falling at his presidential residence in Brasilia, the capital, earlier this week.

The president’s office disclosed on Monday that Bolsonaro, 64, had suffered a fall and was taken to a hospital Monday night for a brain scan, which detected no abnormalities. Bolsonaro spent the night in the hospital and was discharged on Tuesday.

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Seven die in landslide in Brazilian city of Recife

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Young couple and their boy, and nine-year-old girl and her grandmother, among dead

A landslide in Brazil’s northeastern city of Recife on Tuesday caused two houses to collapse, killing seven people, according to local firefighters.

A young couple and their two-month-old boy, as well as a nine-year-old girl and her grandmother, were among the dead, according to Brazilian media outlet G1.

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Indigenous people outraged at Canada police’s possible use of lethal force

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A Guardian report revealed an RCMP strategy document calling for ‘lethal overwatch’ in a January raid

Indigenous people across Canada, and members of the Canadian parliament, have expressed outrage following revelations by the Guardian that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police prepared for the possible use of lethal force against Indigenous land defenders in northern British Columbia earlier this year.

The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, which represents more than 150,000 First Nations people in the province of Manitoba, issued a scathing statement concerning an RCMP strategy document which said that “lethal overwatch” would be required during the 7 January raid.

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Argentina: thousands protest in Mendoza wine region over axed water protections

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Law kept mining projects out of Argentina province – now water for wine-growers will be threatened in drought-stricken area

Argentina’s wine-growing province of Mendoza, renown for its inky red Malbec varietal, has erupted in protest against the surprise overturning of a 2007 water protection law that had successfully kept water-intensive mining projects out of the province.

Thousands of people joined demonstrations on Monday outside the office of provincial governor Rodolfo Suarez in the capital city, also called Mendoza, after he overturned the law, known as 7722 late last week.

The peaceful protest turned violent on Monday afternoon, as police fired rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowd in response to stone-throwing by angry demonstrators.

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How did an accused torturer end up teaching at the Sorbonne?

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Mario Sandoval charged with dictatorship-era crimes in Argentina – so how could he have worked undetected at a top French university?

Mario Sandoval had been living in France for 14 years when he became a lecturer at the Institute of Latin American Studies (IHEAL) at the Sorbonne in Paris.

The Argentinian security specialist was in his mid-40s, spoke good French and had recently obtained French citizenship. His credentials were impeccable – he’d spent the previous five years teaching international relations at another Paris institute, the Université Marne-la-Vallée – and he soon became a valued asset at the Sorbonne.

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