Welcome again Foreign Policy‘s Latin America Brief.
Important this week: Colombians ready for presidential electionThe United States prosecuted them Former president of Cubaand Bolivia is experiencing disruption protests against the government.
While Colombian citizens are preparing to vote in the first phase presidential election on May 31, the political debate has focused more on public insecurity. Last week, attackers on motorcycles to be shot two campaign workers for right-wing candidate Abelardo De La Espriella, an eerie echo of the assassination of presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay last year.
Journalist Mateo Pérez Rueda he was also killed this month after being detained by a group of rebels. And the International Committee of the Red Cross he announced that in 2025 Colombia experienced the worst humanitarian situation in a decade.
Outgoing leftist President Gustavo Petro promised to reduce violence in Colombia. One of his main campaign promises was to negotiate with armed groups, a strategy he called “total peace.” Petro’s chosen successor, presidential candidate Iván Cepeda, has been reluctant to criticize the approach, although it has been frequent. broken.
Vote they show Cepeda in first place, followed by De La Espriella and right-wing senator Paloma Valencia, suggesting one of the rivals could go on to the June 21 runoff with Cepeda. Candidates must get at least 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff.
De La Espriella and Valencia say that Cepeda is weak on crime. They have even suggested that he would allow criminal gangs to kill them, which he did he denies. Cepeda “is the heir to the government that supported the (Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, or FARC,) and the rebels,” De La Espriella. he told it A week last month’s newspaper.
All right-wing candidates have called on Colombia’s security forces to engage in more front-line combat with armed groups. They say the country should seek help from the United States in this effort, calling for a new version of the Plan Colombia bilateral security arrangement of the 2000s and early 2010s.
On foreign policy, both candidates too indicated that they would go back behind Peter action towards more reconciliation and re-establishment of relations with the United States. They would do the same stop Petro moves to increase the speed of Colombia transition away from oil productionwhich has been a pillar of the president international environmental policy.
Valencia, former President Álvaro Uribe’s assistant, has served beaten closer to the political center than De La Espriella, choosing a more centrist co-candidate and promise serving his government and some figures of the center left.
De La Espriella has proposed an extreme economic plan, saying he will cut government spending by 40 percent. A political outsider, De La Espriella has drawn parallel to the President of Argentina Javier Milei. His pledge to build massive new prisons, meanwhile, has invited some compare to the President of Salvador Nayib Bukele.
Cepeda has given few details about his platform other than to say that he would build Petro’s social inclusion project. Like Colombia first a left-wing president, Petro made his government composed of people from marginalized backgrounds and worked to implement tax and pension reforms, although some were overturned or suspended by the courts.
In January, Petro raised Colombia’s minimum wage by more than 23 percent through a presidential decree. Such measures explain the support of many Colombians for Petro, according to street analystsdespite the serious shortcomings of its security policies.
It is unclear which cause—violence, social reform, or something else—will win at the ballot box. Many polls in recent weeks have offered conflicting predictions about who might win the second-round matchup against Cepeda. Earlier this month, the vote too he suggested that nearly 28 percent of Colombian voters were still undecided, leaving room for last-minute surprises.
Friday, May 22: Mexico City is hosting the EU-Mexico meeting.
Monday, May 25, to Friday, May 29: The United States and Mexico are holding a round of talks as part of a review of their trilateral trade agreement with Canada.
Sunday, May 31: Colombians are voting in the first round of the presidential election.
Monday, June 1: Countries sending teams to the World Cup reached the deadline to announce their full squads.
The United States indicts Raúl Castro. On Wednesday, the US Department of Justice he announced criminal charges against former Cuban President Raúl Castro. American aircraft carrier it has arrived in the Caribbean. And the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio provided Spanish-language video message to Cubans criticizing their government and proposing a “new relationship” with the United States.
Taken together, the moves—which all came in commemoration of Cuba’s independence—represent a major escalation in Washington’s pressure campaign against the island.
Trump has ever he suggested The economic and political changes he wants in Cuba can be achieved through negotiations. But the US military also cited the US indictment as legal justification for their raid and arrest of then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January. Some Republican lawmakers want the same fate for Castro, Rachel Oswald of the FP report.
The prosecution Castro’s conviction—for murder and conspiracy to kill an American citizen—relates to his role in the 1996 Cuban government shooting down two civilian planes sent to the island by the Miami-based volunteer group Brothers to the Rescue. Cuba, led at the time by Castro’s brother, Fidel, claimed that the planes violated its airspace and were carrying out covert operations.
Information about Peru’s vote. More than four weeks after the first round of voting in Peru’s presidential election, the authorities confirmed Sunday that left-wing candidate Robert Sánchez will qualify for the June 7 runoff against right-wing front-runner Keiko Fujimori.
Although Peruvian voters are familiar with four-time presidential candidate Fujimori, Sánchez is a relatively unknown face on the national scene. He rose to prominence in part because of the support of jailed former President Pedro Castillo. Ipsos opinion poll over the weekend it found that Fujimori is slightly more popular among voters than Sánchez, but 12 percent said they were still undecided.
One of Sánchez’s first steps since making a comeback has been appoint Former Minister of Economy Pedro Francke, a moderate who served under Castillo, leads his economic team. The gesture was intended to reassure voters worried about the country macroeconomic stability.
Totó la Momposina attends the premiere of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Encanto at the Teatro Colón in Bogotá on November 22, 2021.Diego Cuevas/Getty Images for Disney
A Colombian folk music icon. This week, Colombians are celebrating the life of a singer and songwriter Momposina’s totówho died on Sunday at the age of 85. Totó, as he was popularly known, was born in a small town in northern Colombia and adopted local Afro-Colombian and Indigenous rhythms such as cumbia, porro, chalupa, mapalé, and gaita—bringing them first to Bogotá and then to the world.
Totó lived in France and Cuba, made albums Living Fire with British musician Peter Gabriel’s record label, and was part of a Colombian delegation that accompanying Gabriel García Márquez received his Nobel Prize in 1982. He won many Latin Grammy awards and remained rooted in classical music styles. Totó’s biographer named his “our barefoot diva.”
After the Brothers to the Rescue incident in 1996, the US Congress passed legislation that strengthened US sanctions against Cuba. What was it called?
Jones’s Law
Helms-Burton Law
Cuban Democracy Act
The Magnitsky Act
Its official name was the Cuban Independence and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996.
Miners participate in a demonstration calling for Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz to resign in La Paz on May 18. Jorge Bernal/AFP via Getty Images
Dissatisfaction with the policies of Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz it increased in massive roadblocks across the country, just six months after the Paz period. Government he said about three people have died after emergency vehicles were prevented from reaching the hospital. On Wednesday appeal for regional assistance in the emergency meeting of the United Nations of the United States.
Right-wing Paz took power amid an economic crisis last November, promising to turn the country around. The global energy crisis caused by the Iran war made his pro-market reforms even more painful for consumers in Bolivia, which imports about half of its gasoline.
At the same time, small land owners criticized the land reform law which they said would make them more vulnerable to being bought. In recent weeks, teachers began resist for higher wages, and protests whole from there.
Bolivian trade unions and Indigenous movements have experience in stopping certain areas of the country to express their dissatisfaction with policies. Although the political movement of former President Evo Morales is weak at the ballot box, it still has some power to mobilize on the streets.
Judge to command Morales was arrested last week for failing to appear in court as part of a human trafficking case. As of Thursday evening, he was still at large.
Riots in Bolivia were so great by Thursday that the United States, the European Union, and dozens of former presidents of Latin America. provided statement call for restraint. Some bank branches were closed in La Paz, the international soccer game was on has been cancelled in the region, and Argentina he jumped in equipment.
In response to the demands of the protesters, the administration of Paz the opposite his land classification law, which called for negotiations, and he said A wardrobe shakeup was in the making. But by Thursday afternoon, that had not calmed the barriers.
