"It's politics, stupid!"
The nexus between Latin America and Europe has had ample repercussions in our reports recently, first with the EU-CELAC summit last week, and yesterday drawing a parallel between the elections in Spain and the conservative positions taken by Cuban émigrés, becoming fuel for the forces of organizations like the far-right Vox, which ended up underperforming expectations this Sunday, leaving the Popular Party —the "winner" of the day— with insufficient cover to form a government. The point is that a group of right-wing ex-presidents, gathered in a forum known as Freedom & Democracy, has congratulated the political bloc led by Alberto Núñez, and in passing, has hinted to the left not to play its remaining cards to force a new mandate.
According to the configuration of the chessboard, the PSOE of Pedro Sánchez has the possibility —by appealing to the Catalan independentists— of blocking the arrival of the conservatives to the Moncloa. Sebastián Piñera of Chile, Iván Duque of Colombia, and Felipe Calderón of Mexico are three of the prominent members of the region that make up F&D, and pushing here for the right to close a success that the increasingly misguided polls assumed, make us see the importance of Spain as a historical and strategic interlocutor with Latin America, especially now when it holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. The permanence of social democracy at the top of Madrid is important for many countries that have recently reached agreements that would be interrupted if the right-wing assault is confirmed.
Guatemala
Uncertainty continues to hover over the electoral contest in this country, to the extent that, despite the protection that seems to emanate from the Constitutional Court —the highest in the country—, the Attorney General's Office has not ceased to execute actions that qualify as a flagrant persecution against the Semilla movement, for which the leftist Bernardo Arévalo, who presumably would face the conservative Sandra Torres in the runoff, ran for office. Although in the end the social democrat candidate —a sociologist by profession— may end up participating, there is no doubt that everything that has happened against him since his surprise entrance in the second round has sullied his campaign, especially considering the saying "slander, that something remains".
Now the United States, through Brian Nichols, in charge of Western Hemisphere affairs at Foggy Bottom, has interceded with the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry so that the Government —that is, the Attorney General's Office— does not intervene anymore in the process and allows the electoral process to flow naturally. A representative group of citizens has taken to the streets demanding the resignation of judges and prosecutors who have taken part in what has been called an attempted electoral coup d'état.
People in the streets pressing judicial authorities to renounce (source).
Ecuador, again battled by violence
Some 37% of Ecuadorian prisons reported inmates on hunger strike early Monday morning in Ecuador, where bad news regarding violence both outside and inside the prison system continues to be generated; in five of these penitentiary centers, according to information quoted by EFE, inmates have taken prison officers hostage. This weekend in particular was violent in the Guayas # 1 penitentiary center, in Guayaquil, with the painful balance of six deaths as a result of the confrontation between gangs that have extrapolated to this scenario the fierce fight that they hold in the city essentially for territories and routes for drug trafficking. In the last four years, some 450 inmates have been killed as part of this unfortunate dynamic. This Sunday, the mayor of the port city of Manta was also shot dead, the umpteenth public figure to fall victim to the unstoppable wave of violence there, with a femme soccer player as a collateral victim of the same incident.
The Ecuadorian prison system is incapable of containing the violence between gangs that transfer there their rivalry aimed at controlling the different facilities (source).
Venezuela
About thirteen years ago I was —for five months— in the state of Bolivar, providing technical support as a young student of computer science in a joint program with Cuba that provided primary health care, mainly oriented to vulnerable sectors. On the other hand, the news and history, as you can imagine, are passions for me, and naturally, I am no stranger to the main problems of the region. However, this effort that translates into The Latin American Report each day has led me to discover things that have surprised me greatly, such as the fact that in Venezuela abortion is still officially forbidden, due, according to AFP, to a markedly conservative Catholic-based character in society. Not even 24 years of the left in power have been able to address this issue, and today many Venezuelan women live or have lived through an ordeal due to its current legal configuration, resorting to very unsafe home remedies —a drink prepared with avocado seeds, for example—, or paying large sums of up to 1,000 dollars in private medical centers, what discriminates against those who live in a situation of economic vulnerability, complemented by a problem that often accompanies poverty, which is the absence of rational thinking (they tend to have many children, even when their conditions indicate that it is senseless).
Venezuelan women are trapped in a conservative system regarding abortion (source).
Finance
The region's major currencies ended with a mixed performance on Monday, as we await the Fed's tone regarding future interest rate hikes in the world's leading economy. The Brazilian real continues to perform well, leading today the rest of the six currencies that decide the financial health of the region, followed by the Mexican peso; the Argentinean currency continues to close in the red, although the Merval index of the local stock exchange showed the largest increase, followed by the Bovespa of the B3 Sao Paulo Stock Exchange.
This is all for our fifty-second report. I have referenced the sources dynamically in the text, and remember you can learn how and where to follow the LATAM trail news by reading my work here. Have a nice day.
Edited with Canva.