Financial News on Latin America

The GDP of all of Latin America is one-third that of the USA. Would be bigger if Spain hadn't stolen $10 trillion of gold and silver from Latin America in the 1500s and 1600s. Wikipedia: Latin America

• The new president of Bolivia supports using blockchain for public procurement to reduce corruption in the government
  - Zero Hedge, 22 October 2025

• The new president of Perú declares state of emergency in the capital, Lima, as it tries to stem surging violence
  - Associated Press, 21 October 2025

• The USA military, authorized by Trump, murders three more suspected - suspected - drug traffickers on a boat in the waters of the Caribbean. .
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 October 2025

• Ecuador says that it has no evidence of any crime committed by the survivor of a murderous missile attack against a mini-submarine by the USA military against suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean. One of the lies of the USA is that mini-submarine was transporting fentanyl, unlikely since the vast majority of fentanyl flows into the USA through México.
  - Associated Press, 20 October 2025

• How a giant oil company, Chevron, became a pillar of the fragile economy of Venezuela. Chevron exploits unusual power in socialist-led Venezuela, positioning the company to financially gain from whatever comes of the crisis between Washington and Caracas.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 20 October 2025

• Bolivia elects pro-market president after two decades of socialist rule. The election of Rodrigo Paz marks a sharp turn for Bolivia, which will seek closer ties to the U.S. and lithium investments.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 20 October 2025

• Bolivia elects pro-market president after two decades of socialist rule. The election of Rodrigo Paz marks a sharp turn for Bolivia, which will seek closer ties to the U.S. and lithium investments.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 20 October 2025

• The [crimes] behind your clothing's "made in Guatemala" label, crimes committed against tens of thousands of women who work in clothing factories in Guatemala making cheap clothes for people in the USA. These crimes include imposing impossible work quotas, wage theft and sexual harassment.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 18 October 2025

• [VIDEO]: Female workers describe impossible quotas, sexual harassment and death threats inside factories in Guatemala producing clothes bound for the USA and for clothing brands in the USA
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 18 October 2025

• Poison cigars, propaganda and coups litter the sordid history of the CIA in Latin America. For much of the 20th century, the CIA devised plots to overthrow governments, kill high-profile leaders or arm dissident groups.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 October 2025

• Trump might want to use the CIA to overthrow the government of oil-rich, gold-rich Venezuela (these riches give it little need to produce illegal drugs). CIA overthrows have been disasters in Latin America across the decades, and the last oil-rich country the USA helped overthow - Iraq - has become a disaster.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 17 October 2025

• The peso of Argentina drops in value against the USA dollar, desptie a socialist bailout from the USA
  - Buenos Aires Times, 16 October 2025

• People in Argentina sell the peso, betting that the socialist bailout by the USA is doomed to fail. People in Argentina are convinced that even a flood of cash from the USA will not be able to stop another painful devaluation of the peso.
  - Buenos Aires Times, 16 October 2025

• The president of Panama, José Raúl Molino once again accuses Trump of pressuring the government of Panama to reduce the presence in Panama of companies based in Zhōngguó. He alleges that the USA Embassy threatens to take away visas to visit the USA from government officials in Panama who favor the presence of companies from Zhōngguó.
  - Tico Times, 16 October 2025

• The authoritarian Trump authorizes the CIA to violently overthrow the government of Venezuela led by Nicolas Maduro
  - Zero Hedge, 15 October 2025

• The authoritarian Trump authorizes the CIA to violently overthrow the government of Venezuela led by Nicolas Maduro
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 15 October 2025

• Trump orders the USA military to murder 6 alleged drug traffickers in a vessel offshore of Venezuela
  - Zero Hedge, 14 October 2025

• Trump orders the USA military to murder 6 alleged drug traffickers in a vessel offshore of Venezuela
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 October 2025

• Violeta Parra (1928-1967), a fold 'genius' who redefined music in Latin America. A self-taught composer and interpreter, she led an unconventional and itinerant life devoted to spreading Chilean folkloric music.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 13 October 2025

• Trump's taxes/tariffs be damned. These funds based in Latin America are buys. iShares MSCI Brazil (EWZ), the biggest, is up 36% this year, up 8% annually in the last ten years. iShares MSCI Mexico (EWW) is second biggest will similar returns.
  - Barron's, 11 October 2025

• Dina Boluarte, the president of Perú, was removed from office on Thursday after a late-night congressional vote in which parties across the political spectrum called for her ouster. Boluarte has been under investigation for months over various allegations including bribery and involvement in a deadly crackdown on protesters in 2022.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 10 October 2025

• Dina Boluarte, the president of Perú, was removed from office on Thursday after a late-night congressional vote in which parties across the political spectrum called for her ouster. Boluarte has been under investigation for months over various allegations including bribery and involvement in a deadly crackdown on protesters in 2022.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 October 2025

• Dina Boluarte, the president of Perú, was removed from office on Thursday after a late-night congressional vote in which parties across the political spectrum called for her ouster. Boluarte has been under investigation for months over various allegations including bribery and involvement in a deadly crackdown on protesters in 2022.
  - HuffPost, 10 October 2025

• Trump says that murdering alleged drug traffickers off the coast of Venezuela will prevent deadly drugs from reaching the USA. But the major drug smuggling routes are through Central America.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 October 2025

• The Senate fails to pass a law to stop Trump from killing alleged drug traffickers in the waters of the Caribbean
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 October 2025

• The Senate fails to pass a law to stop Trump from killing alleged drug traffickers in the waters of the Caribbean
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 October 2025

• The Senate fails to pass a law to stop Trump from killing alleged drug traffickers in the waters of the Caribbean
  - Zero Hedge, 09 October 2025

• The Senate fails to pass a law to stop Trump from killing alleged drug traffickers in the waters of the Caribbean
  - Associated Press, 09 October 2025

• Año cafetero 2024-2025 registró la mejor producción de los últimos 33 años
  - La Republica, 07 October 2025

• Constellation Brands, which imports Modelo and Corona, posted lower second-quarter sales and lowered its full-year earnings outlook again as its core Hispanic demographic continues to buy less beer amid Trump's [racist] immigration crackdown.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 October 2025

• A chilling new tactic in Nicaragua: arrest, then silence. Nicaragua's authoritarian government controlled by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has begun holding dissidents without revealing their whereabouts or acknowledging their detention. Two have turned up dead.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 October 2025

• Zhōngguó says a top USA envoy in Panama is "spreading lies" after a "malign" presence insult. Exchange of sharp accusations is latest instance of tensions between the USA and Zhōngguó flaring over Panama, a strategically important Central American country.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 06 October 2025

• Protesters rally in Quito as Ecuador declares state of emergency in 10 provinces (with large Indigenous communities). Anti-government demonstrations began two weeks ago, organized by the largest Indigenous group in Ecuador, in response to the removal of a fuel subsidy that raised diesel prices from $1.80 to $2.80 per gallon.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 05 October 2025

• The USA military has launched a murderous strike on a fourth alleged drug smuggling boat from Venezuela, killing four people on board and vowing there will be more attacks to come. Twenty-one people have now been murdered in Trump's 'secret forever' war.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 04 October 2025

• The USA military has launched a murderous strike on a fourth alleged drug smuggling boat from Venezuela, killing four people on board and vowing there will be more attacks to come. Twenty-one people have now been murdered in Trump's 'secret forever' war.
  - The Daily Beast, 04 October 2025

• Trump isn't murdering low-level drug traffickers from Venezuela to fight drug trafficking (Venezuela isn't a big source of drugs). Trump and his people want to is to somehow cheaply acheive regime in Venezuela, by scaring the military of Venezuela into deposing President Maduro.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 October 2025

• Lawmakers from both political parties pressed Pentagon on legal basis for murdering alleged drug traffickers at sea. The Defense Department general counsel faced questions from Republicans and Democrats in a closed-door briefing.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 03 October 2025

• Leonardo Villar, gerente del Banco de la República dice que el crecimiento de la economía de Colombia no sería sostenible a largo plazo
  - El Tiempo (locked), 02 October 2025

• Haiti, suffering many economic problems, suffers further, as the USA ends a trade initiative that imperils embattled clothing exporters that employ thousands who make garments for Hanes, Calvin Klein and Gap - the last big industry for Haiti
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 02 October 2025

• An antibiotic discovered on Easter Island in 1964 sparked a billion-dollar pharmaceutical success story. Yet the history told about "miracle drug" (rapamycin) has completely left out the people and politics that made its discovery possible. Although rapamycin has generated billions of dollars in revenue, the Rapa Nui people have received no financial benefit to date. This raises questions about Indigenous rights and biopiracy, which is the commercialization of Indigenous knowledge.
  - The Conversation, 29 September 2025

• Trump and his administration revoke the visa for the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, after Petro, at a pro-Palestine protest, urged USA soldiers to "disobey Trump's orders" and "not point their rifles at humanity". The Christian Trump revokes Petro's visa for advocating peace, but doesn't revoke Netanyahu's visa for overseeing the deaths of 60,000+ Palestinians
  - The Guardian, 27 September 2025

• If President Javier Milei of Argentina is really a free-market hero, then he doesn't need a socialist bailout from the USA. If the free-markets thought that Argentina would pay back the money, Argentina would not need another socialist subsidy, this time from the USA.
  - Real Clear Markets, 27 September 2025

• Heineken acquires Costa Rica's Imperial Beer brand throught its purchase of FIFCO, the leading beverage company in Costa Rica, FIFCO.
  - The Takeout, 23 September 2025

• Colombia es el sexto país del mundo que paga la deuda más cara. Este año, Colombia destinará 86 billones de pesos (USA $23 billion) al pago de interés en 2025. La deuda pública se encarce y se ubica entre las más costosas del mundo. Los pagos de interés de la deuda equivaldrán al 2565 de las amortizaciones. El interés representa el 4,7% del Producto Interno Bruto.
  - El Nuevo Siglo, 21 September 2025

• They helped oust the old dictator. Now the new dictator is prosecuting them. President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and his wife, who is co-president, have been arresting longtime loyalists, in an apparent quest to ensure no one outside the family rises to power.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 September 2025

• A large portion of water resources in Catholic Christian Honduras are on indigenous territory, and (the mostly white) Christian politicians in the government often grants access to those resources to business groups without adequately consulting local indigenous communities (who are mostly non-white). One woman activist, Berta Cáceres, was murdered for her efforts to organize the indigenous communities. Now her daughter, Bertha Zúñiga, is facing the same threats.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 21 September 2025

• [The authoritarian Christian] Trump orders the USA military to murder a third group of alleged drug traffickers (not arrested, not tried, not convicted) in international waters. [Trump still refuses to order the military to murder corporate opioid drug traffickers in the USA who caused much worse problems with their drugs for the USA.]
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 20 September 2025

• [The authoritarian Christian] Trump gleefully celebrates the murder of more alleged drug traffickers (not arrested, not tried, not convicted(not arrested, not tried, not convicted) by releasing a video of their murders
  - The Daily Beast, 20 September 2025

• The state-owned Zhōngguó Railway Construction has reached a US$470 million agreement with the State Railway of Chile to build a 26km (16.2-mile) electric railway in its congested capital, Santiago. Other companies in Zhōngguó are bidding to construct a tunnel along the same railway system, reflecting Zhōngguó's burgeoning economic ties in Latin America.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 18 September 2025

• Fast money is gambling on an accelerating emerging-market trade. The net dollar short versus emerging currencies is approaching 10-year highs.
  - Zero Hedge (locked), 15 September 2025

• ~$1,300,000,000 The Prosecutor General's Office of Colombia has opened a criminal investigation against four former directors of Neuva EPS, the largest healthcare intermediary in Colombia. According to the prosecution, the Nueva EPS directors omitted to report approximately 14 million unpaid hospital invoices to avoid the intervention of the Healthcare Superintendent and keep up the appearance of a functional company. In an address to the nation, President Gustavo Petro said that the unpaid hospital invoices amounted to almost $1.3 billion (COP5 trillion), which was discovered after the government decided to intervene in 2024.
  - Colombia Reports, 15 September 2025

• The criminally-corrupt government of Venezuela has dramatically expanded its use of USDT, the controversial stablecoin better known as Tether, allowing currency exchanges for private sector businesses (and corrupt interests in Venezuela) that can no longer access traditional dollars
  - Benzinga, 14 September 2025

• Why do so many leaders of countries in Catholic/Protestant-Christian Latin America (except for Uruguay) have legal problems? [The legacy of the evils of Christian conquistadors who conquered Latin America, stole trillions, and committed genocide.]
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 14 September 2025

• An explanation of the Panama Canal's mega-project plan to engineer a solution to the severe droughts of the future that will hurt the water supplies used by the Canal. Solutions include building a dam to feed Lake Gatun, the fresh water source for canal operations, and a land bridge where a pipeline would be built to move natural gas liquids so more LNG vessels can transit (the vessels can transit the Canal weighing less, and thus travel through lower water levels)
  - Comcast's CNBC, 14 September 2025

• Emerging market debt is looking better as the bond market changes. Some managers see bond opportunities in Turkey, Guatemala, Paraguay, México and Malaysia.
  - Barron's, 13 September 2025

• Trump's racist immigration policies have resulted in increased money transfers to Guatemala, Honduras and other nations in recent months. Undocumented migrants in the United States say they are sending money to relatives while they can.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 September 2025

• Banana exports from Costa Rica decline 20% due to heavy rains and disease
  - TicoTimes, 09 September 2025

• Authorities in Costa Rica report a massive influx of Nicaraguan gold miners known to the Crucitas area, following Nicaragua's decision to grant mining concessions to Zhōngguó near the San Juan River
  - Q Costa Rica, 09 September 2025

• Socialists voted out of power in Bolivia in recent elections. The ruling MAS socialist party, suffered a historic defeat: its candidate for president failed to reach 4 percent of the vote, and in the legislature, socialists saw their representation slashed from 75 seats to just one. This collapse was also fueled by internal divisions.
  - Zero Hedge, 07 September 2025

• How the nationalist socialist Trump is repeating the nationalist socialist policies of Juan Perón that turned Argentina into a global economic laughingstock. Trump is following the Peronist playbook of import substitution, emergency declarations, personal dealmaking, fiscal and monetary recklessness, and unprecedented government control over private enterprise. And, as with Peronism in Argentina, much of USA economic policy making runs directly through the president himself.
  - The Atlantic, 07 September 2025

• Realizing that a more powerful Zhōngguó is harder to bully, Trump orders the Defense Department to prepare plans to prioritize protecting the homeland and Western Hemisphere, a striking reversal from the military's yearslong mandate to focus on the threat from Zhōngguó. The move would mark a major shift from recent Democrat and Republican administrations, including Trump's first term in office, when he referred to Zhōngguó as the greatest rival of the USA. And it would likely inflame Zhōngguó-hawks in both parties who view the leadership of Zhōngguó as a danger to USA security.
  - Politico, 07 September 2025

• The jungle town of Leticia provides Colombia's only access to the Amazon River. But as the river changes course the town could soon be left high and dry and that's fueling a border dispute with neighboring Peru
  - NPR, 07 September 2025

• Irfaan Ali re-elected for second term as oil-rich the president of oil-rich Guyana. The center-left 45-year-old politician gets new mandate to manage Guyana's newfound oil wealth.
  - Al Jazeera, 07 September 2025

• Starting in 2026, students in Costa Rica will be prohibited from using their addictive cellphones in classrooms. The Ministry of Public Education rightly considers cellphones to be a big distraction to the learning process.
  - La Nacion (locked), 04 September 2025

• Peso colombiano cae 0,06% frente a sus pares regionales tras cinco sesiones al alza. La presión sobre la divisa fue predominantemente interna, con la reforma tributaria en el centro del debate, ya que genera dudas sobre su impacto en el consumo y en el costo de vida
  - La Republica, 04 September 2025

• BRICS and SCO are gradually rebalancing world power. What brings SCO and BRICS countries together, and there is a growing overlap between them (both in terms of members and partners), is their shared goal of breaking the [much white, racist, Christian] West's de facto monopoly over global governance and power, so that everything becomes fairer for the World Majority, which is much less white and much less Christian.
  - Zero Hedge, 04 September 2025

• The Trump administration says Venezuela is sending vast amounts of cocaine to the USA. But Venezuela's role in the drug trade is being overstated by these "thou shalt not" lies, experts say.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 September 2025

• The Trump administration says Venezuela is sending vast amounts of cocaine to the USA. But Venezuela's role in the drug trade is being overstated by these "thou shalt not" lies, experts say.
  - Al Jazeera, 04 September 2025

• 75% of the decrease in rainfall in the Amazon is due to deforestation, so farmers can produce more beef that people should be eating less of
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 September 2025

• Colombia's natural gas investment predicted to rise 35% to $1.1 billion in 2025
  - Thomson's Reuters, 02 September 2025

• For the first time in 40 Years, deep and cold ocean waters fail to emerge (upwelling) off the coast of Panama. Upwelling is a process that allows cold, nutrient-rich waters from the depths of the ocean to rise to the surface.
  - Phys.org, 01 September 2025

• Iceland is the world's most peaceful country in 2025, according to the Global Peace Index. Others in the top 5 are Ireland, New Zealand, Austrian and Switzerland. Costa Rica was the most peaceful nation in Latin America. The Christian USA under the authoritarian Trump ranked very low, 128 - less peaceful than violent countries such as Honduras, Bangladesh amd Uganda, in part because of the gue amount of money that Christian Americans spend on weapons/swords which contradicts their Christian beliefs to convert weapons/swords into "ploughshares".
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 30 August 2025

• Chiquita to return to Panama and invest $30 million and create 5,000 jobs, rehiring thousands of people fired during recent strikes
  - Thomson's Reuters, 29 August 2025

• Chiquita to return to Panama and invest $30 million and create 5,000 jobs, rehiring thousands of people fired during recent strikes
  - Tico Times, 29 August 2025

• The president of Panama criticized port concession companies in the Caribbean region of the country for the surge in drug trafficking, mainly cocaine, bound for Europe
  - Tico Times, 27 August 2025

• Drug cartels in México are exporting their bloody rivalry (only possible because of the huge addiction of the USA to drugs) to Ecuador and beyond. Two two most powerful drug rings are locked in a turf war over control of an important drug smuggling route in South America.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 August 2025

• The Panama Canal Authority plans sale of new ports to bring in competition ahead of a deal with BlackRock. The Canal's administrator wants more companies managing canal ports to dilute the influence of BlackRock partner Mediterranean Shipping Company and, potentially, Cosco which is based in Zhōngguó.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 August 2025

• 45% of workers in Central America avoid going to the bathroom at work, due to social stigma. Specialists warn that holding back this natural urge can lead to serious health problems.
  - Q Costa Rica, 25 August 2025

• Is the Trump administration building up to a military confrontation with Venezuela? A major increase in U.S. naval forces in the south Caribbean Sea has been underway since President Trump signed a directive targeting some cartels.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 August 2025

• A gold-trading dynasty vies for power in oil-rich Guyana. Azruddin Mohamed, a flamboyant scion sanctioned by the U.S., aims to become president in elections to be held in September.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 22 August 2025

• The USA is applying more political pressure on Venezuela. What will Zhōngguó do? Zhōngguó is an 'all-weather' partner to Venezuela, for which political continuity is important to Zhōngguó
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 22 August 2025

• As the environment-of-his-Jesus hating Trump destroys the renewable energy industry in the USA, renewable energy companies in Zhōngguó seize more market share in emerging markets. Deals in Asia and Latin America demonstrate Zhōngguó's leadership in renewable energy, as he environment-of-his-Jesus hating (and technologically igonorant geezer) Trump labels wind and solar power "the scam of the century"
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 22 August 2025

• El Salvador is enforcing strict student dress codes to bring discipline back to schools
  - Associated Press, 22 August 2025

• The authoritarian government of Nicaragua has granted political asylum to Colomnia's fugitive former spy chief, who is wanted by justice over his alleged role in the embezzlement of public funds
  - Colombia Reports, 21 August 2025

• Glencore targets 1 million tons of copper to be mined in Argentina in the next ten years
  - Thomson's Reuters, 21 August 2025

• The folly/idiocy of Trump's fantasy solution of bombing drug cartels in Latin America
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 August 2025

• Trump orders the Pentagon to deploy three warships against (to bomb?) drug cartels in Latin America
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 21 August 2025

• Gold exports from Perú to Zhōngguó surged in the first half of 2025 to surpass shipments from all of 2024
  - Thomson's Reuters, 20 August 2025

• The Panama Canal will earn about $400 million less in the next fiscal year due to a drop in ship traffic caused by global economic "uncertainty", the canal authority warned Tuesday. For the upcoming fiscal year beginning October 1, the canal is expected to generate $5.2 billion from ship transits and other services, announced José Ramón Icaza, the Minister for Canal Affairs.
  - Tico Times, 20 August 2025

• "I do not think that there is a government in Latin America that has given in more" [to the demands of the authoritarian Trump], referring to the president of Panama, Jose Mulino. Trump is demanding a Panama-Zhōngguó break-up and triggering political backlash in Panama. Many people in Panama are unhappy with Mulino's deference to Trump and, specifically, with his spurning of Zhōngguó. A July poll found that 73.6 percent of Panamanians disapprove of the national government. Panama is home to Central America's largest community of people with the heritage of Zhōngguó.
  - Politico, 19 August 2025

• A workers union in Panama files a lawsuit against Chiquita Brands, after the company fired 6,000 people in Panama in the town of Changuinola, in the Caribbean province of Bocas del Toro, dismissed the workers after protests that semi-paralyzed the region.
  - Tico Times, 18 August 2025

• Peru hopes to attract investment with tax cuts and sustain agro-export boom, minister says
  - Thomson's Reuters, 18 August 2025

• A less-probably candidate in the presidential elections of Bolivia, the politically centrist Rodrigo Paz, came in first in the current elections, but did not achieve a majority of the votes. So there will be a run-off with right-wing former President Jorge Quiroga, who finished second.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 18 August 2025

• A centrist candidate for the presidency of Bolivia surges, as voters turn away from both the far-right and far-left
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 August 2025

• People in Bolivia vote out socialists after two decades of being in power. Voters angered by soaring inflation and fuel shortages back market-friendly candidates to overhaul the economy of Bolivia.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 18 August 2025

• How an emergency declaration deepened Honduras's crime crisis. Critics say Honduras's long-running state of exception created a system of impunity for the country's law enforcement.
  - Al Jazeera, 15 August 2025

• Ecological progress in Ecuador is under severe threat from a series of reforms steamrolled by its young populist Catholic Christian president, Daniel Noboa. Mr. Noboa is the heir to an agribusiness empire. His reforms will throw Ecuador's stunning landscapes open to mining and drilling, dismantle government agencies in the name of "efficiency", target public officials and civic organizations that he claims obstruct his agenda and concentrate broad emergency powers in his own hands. His first attack on the environment was to dissolve the Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition on July 24 and hand its powers to the Ministry of Energy and Mines. [No doubt inspired by the environment-of-his-Jesus-hating Trump.]
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 August 2025

• Saudi Arabia and Chile agree to imports of poultry from Brazil
  - Thomson's Reuters, 14 August 2025

• High levels of oil-derived microplastics are found on the beaches of 'environmentally-friendly' Costa Rica
  - Tico Times, 14 August 2025

• Panama Canal to launch the tender for construction and operation of two new ports for the Panama Canal
  - Thomson's Reuters, 14 August 2025

• CK Hutchison says US$23 billion global ports sale (including ports in Panama) delayed until 2026. The deal is taking much longer than expected because of the size and complexity, co-managing director Frank Sixt says.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post (locked), 14 August 2025

• CK Hutchison says US$23 billion global ports sale (including ports in Panama) delayed until 2026. The deal is taking much longer than expected because of the size and complexity, co-managing director Frank Sixt says.
  - Zero Hedge, 14 August 2025

• A collection of human rights reports by the State Department under the Christian Trump trimmed or omitted past language on violations in Catholic Christian El Salvador, Catholic Chrisitan Hungary, Islamic Saudi Arabia, the Islamic UAE and Jewish Israel, all seen as partners [in authoritarianism?] by the Christian Trump
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 August 2025

• The racist Trump compared crime in Washington to to violence in Latin American capitals. Yesterday, leaders in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia defended their cities, calling the racist Trump misinformed about their relatively safe cities.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 August 2025

• Zhōngguó and the USA clash at the UN over the Panama Canal
  - Associated Press, 11 August 2025

• Haiti declares a 3-month state of emergency as gangs ravage the central region of Haiti, which is an important agricultural region for Haiti.
  - Zero Hedge, 11 August 2025

• Too much work and too little productivity: the eternal dilemma of Latin America. The region continues to have wide productivity gaps. If this problem is alleviated, real labor income for workers could increase.
  - Q Costa Rica, 11 August 2025

• Trump's taxes/tariffs threaten to worsen the tourism slump in Costa Rica. As people in the USA have less money to spend due to Trump's taxes/tariffs, they will travel less.
  - Tico Times, 11 August 2025

• Panama has signed a $2.486 billion loan agreement with Nihon to fund the construction of Metro Line 3
  - Tico Times, 10 August 2025

• A famously stable glacier in Argentina suddenly looks anything but stable. After holding steady for decades, the beloved Perito Moreno has thinned considerably since 2019, scientists said. Blame global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 August 2025

• Costa Rica confronts the potential collapse of its national waste management system. The country generates more than 4,000 tons of solid waste each day, an estimated 80% of which could be recycled or reused.
  - Tico Times, 08 August 2025

• In heavily Catholic Christian Colombia (including big cities such as Medellin), homosexuals and transexuals are being killed by armed criminal groups with little fear of prosecution.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 06 August 2025

• The authoritarian Trump betrays the people of Venezuela. Trump first cancels Chevron's license to operate in Venezuela, controlled by the authoritarian Maduro, and then quietly restores Chevron's ability to conduct oil operations in Venezuela.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 04 August 2025

• New problems for CK Hutchison under a Panama ports partnership proposal. A state partnership plan floated by president of Panama could trigger significant losses for Hong Kong-based conglomerate, experts warned. All due to Trump's threats against Panama.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 04 August 2025

• How the authoritarian Bayib Bukele consolidated total power in El Salvador, starting with the failure of the traditional right- and left-wing parties to solve the country's deep problems
  - Tico Times, 02 August 2025

• Archaeologists think they have found the remains of a centuries-old Maya rebel stronghold in México where non-Christian, non-white Indigenous people resisting the Spanish lived for over a century from 1586 to 1695. Soon thereafter, Christian Spaniards destroyed the city and murdered many of the people.
  - Live Science, 31 July 2025

• $40,000,000 - Costa Rica will need to spend more money to fix runway repairs at its northern airport that cost $40 million and was 'finished' just six months ago. A recent report reveals premature damage, deformations, and asphalt sinking on the newly refurbished runway. There is a judicial investigation into the contracts, work and government supervision.
  - Tico Times, 31 July 2025

• Facebook bought its AI to rural Colombia. Now students are failing exams. When Meta embedded AI bots in its apps, even students in the most remote corners of Colombia gained access. But rather than boosting learning, it is harming their education. [KM: But apparently making the extemely rich Mark Zuckerberg richer.]
  - Rest of World, 30 July 2025

• Emerging markets are outperforming stocks in the USA
  - Barron's, 26 July 2025

• High-elevation tropical forest soils in the Andes mountains of Colombia are found to be rich in carbon (pyrogenic carbon) from past fires
  - Phys.org, 25 July 2025

• Trump authorizes Chevron to resume pumping oil in authoritarian Venezuela
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 25 July 2025

• Trump authorizes Chevron to resume pumping oil in authoritarian Venezuela
  - Bloomberg, 25 July 2025

• Codelco, the leading copper producer in Chila, is still without details on the 50% copper taxes/tariffs that Trump wants to impose starting August 1st
  - Thomson's Reuters, 23 July 2025

• Authoritarian Venezuela accusses authoritarian El Salvador of torturing Venezuelan migrants deported from the USA under the authoritarian Trump's racist immigration policies
  - Tico Times, 22 July 2025

• The authoritarian government of Venezuela is attacking in economists in the country, as inflation surges and the government wants to suppress honest econmic assessments
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 July 2025

• The declining value of the USA dollar in Costa Rica is financially hurting local industries such as tourism and agriculture, while forcing the increase of the price of many products
  - Tico Times, 21 July 2025

• Despite its reputation as an environmentally-friendly country, Costa Rica (ab)uses the most human-toxic pesticides per square hectare in the world, 34 kilograms per hectare (the average of OECD countries is 2 kilograms). The politicians are bought off by rich interests to let this public health problem worsen, such as the regular leaks of pesticides into water supplies.
  - La Nacion, 20 July 2025

• Saul Mendez, the leader of the biggest union of workers in Panama, is forced to flee to exile Bolivia, after being politically persecutde by the government. The government accuses the union of corruption (laughable in Latin America), while the government has faced strikes from construction and banana workers, along with protests against reforms to social security and other government measures.
  - TicoTimes, 20 July 2025

• Chevron completed its $53 billion purchase of Hess after prevailing in a legal dispute with Exxon over one of the most promising oil projects in the world, off the shores of Guyana in northern South America
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 July 2025

• Chevron completed its $53 billion purchase of Hess after prevailing in a legal dispute with Exxon over one of the most promising oil projects in the world, off the shores of Guyana in northern South America
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 19 July 2025

• People in El Salvador deserve "something better" than living between "gangs or dictatorship", said Noah Bullock, director of the influential NGO Cristosal, in an interview. On Thursday, the organization closed its office in El Salvador, denouncing "repression" and increased "persecution" from the government of Nayib Bukele.
  - Tico Times, 18 July 2025

• The government of Zhōngguó is demanding that Cosco, the largest shipping company in Zhōngguó, be included in the Western-investor deal to purchase ports from Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison. Zhōngguó wants state-owned Cosco to be an equal partner and shareholder of the ports with BlackRock and Mediterranean Shipping Company.
  - Zero Hedge, 17 July 2025

• The government of Zhōngguó is demanding that Cosco, the largest shipping company in Zhōngguó, be included in the Western-investor deal to purchase ports from Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison. Zhōngguó wants state-owned Cosco to be an equal partner and shareholder of the ports with BlackRock and Mediterranean Shipping Company.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 July 2025

• People in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, are suffering from a shortage of water, after a landslide damaged a pipeline that supplied water to much of southern Quito
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 16 July 2025

• The southern hemisphere is full of birds found nowhere else on Earth. Their importance has been overlooked.
  - Phys.org, 15 July 2025

• Nearly 5,000 people in Haiti have been killed in the last 9 months, as gang violence spreads beyond the capital
  - Zero Hedge, 11 July 2025

• Oil drillers are investing more money in Brazil, Guyana and Argentina, which are increasing their share of the global oil market
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 July 2025

• Finally. The South American country of Suriname elects Jennifer Simmons as the first female president of the country
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 06 July 2025

• Colombia, el segundo país de la OCDE que tuvo la inflación mensual más alta en mayo. Por Colombia, iflación llegó a 5,1% en mayo. Por la OCDE en general, inflación llegó a 4,0%.
  - La Republica, 04 July 2025

• The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, uses his presidential power to mock a journalist falsely accused of incest in a video that was of course, generated by AI
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 July 2025

• Protests by farmers, the non-rich, environmentalists and others increase in number and volume over the efforts to increase water supplies for the Panama Canal by building a 4,600-hectare reservoir west of the Canal. About 2,500 people will have to be relocated to build the reservoir.
  - TicoTimes, 02 July 2025

• How the libertarian president of Argentina, Javier Milei, mostly eliminated inflation, from 211% in 2023 to 2% in 2025. He balanced the budget, reduced public spending and borrowing, and deregulating more of the economy.
  - The Daily Economy, 02 July 2025

• With developing nations crushed by unaffordable borrowing ($8.7 trillion worth of debt), and the USA abandoning much of its foreign aid, leaders of some developing countries are arranging deals for debt forgiveness.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 July 2025

• For many years, federal investigators in the USA acquired evidence of a corrupt collusion between the Bukele government of El Salvador and the MS-13 criminal gang. Now Trump is sending high ranking members of the MS-13 gang back to El Salvador to be imprisoned by Bukele, crippling USA corruption investigations.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 July 2025

• While Trump lessens investigations into the leaders of the MS-13 criminal gang, he orders federal investigators to instead investigate Abrego Garcia - at best a minor criminal gang member - because of the huge political controversy over Garcia's deportation. [KXnote: fighting politics is more important to Trump than fighting crime].
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 July 2025

• Police in El Salvador say that quotas and rumors fuelded President Bukele's mass arrests, not principles of justice
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 28 June 2025

• Coffee farms in the Los Santos region of Costa Rica are being devestated by climate change due to global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Heavy rains are a big culprit, fueling diseases like coffee rust and anthracnose. Wet soils cause young fruit to drop early, and irregular flowering throws off the crop cycle. Farmers now obsess over weather forecasts, trying to adapt to unpredictable rains and rising temperatures that disrupt the delicate balance coffee plants need.
  - Tico Times, 26 June 2025

• Pope Leo XIV has said the Catholic Christian Church must establish a culture (which does not exist now) that refuses to tolerate abuse in "any form", as he thanked a journalist from Peru for reporting on sexual abuse inside a powerful Catholic Christian group, the now disbanded Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, a hugely influential Catholic society which had deep ties to the powerful and wealthy Christians of Peru.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 21 June 2025

• Medical cannabis is now available in Costa Rica. However, access remains tightly regulated. Its sale is restricted exclusively to pharmacies, and a doctor's prescription is required, according to the newly enacted regulation.
  - TicoTimes, 19 June 2025

• The Monómeros Colombo Venezolanos fertilizer plant, one of Venezuela's most valuable assets and a target of Colombian President Petro's government, s reportedly on the verge of losing its operating license in Colombia due to pressure the United States is exerting against the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro.
  - La Republica, 19 June 2025

• Trump has the visa revoked of a former president of Panama, Martin Torrijos, who criticized a deal of Panama with Trump. Two politicians who spoke out against recent accords between the United States and Panama lost their permission to travel to the USA.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 June 2025

• Panama faces turmoil as protests turn deadly over a controversial pension reform. The government is facing nationwide protests over a pension reform law passed in March, which is opposed primarily by construction unions, teachers, and Indigenous groups.
  - Tico Times, 18 June 2025

• Zhōngguó is unleashing a new export shock on the world. As Trump's taxes/tariffs close off the USA market, products from Zhōngguó are flooding countries from Southeast Asia to Europe to Latin America.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 June 2025

• More bitcoin corruption: El Salvador buys 250 bitcoins after it signed an agreement in December with the Intertional Monetary Fund to NOT buy more bitcoins
  - Zero Hedge, 16 June 2025

• Responding to a Global Times reporter's question regarding USA embassy's claims about replacing Huawei telecommunication towers in Panama with what it called "trusted US technology" and that the USA is working to "counter malign influence of Zhōngguó in our hemisphere, making the American continent stronger and safer", and Panama President's demand for the USA Embassy to stop meddling in the domestic affairs of Panama, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson in Zhōngguó, Guo Jiakun, said at a regular press conference on Monday that the USA has long engaged in surveillance, monitoring, and cyberattacks in Latin America and the Caribbean regions, bringing negative influence to the Western Hemisphere and making countries on the American continent feel unsafe.
  - Global Times, 16 June 2025

• The government of Panama arrested Francisco Smith, leader of the union of banana workers - SITRAIBANA, accusing him of orchestrating road blockades during a six-week strike against Chiquita Brands. The arrest, just days after a deal ended the labor dispute, has sparked outrage among workers and heightened tensions in Bocas del Toro, near the Costa Rica border.
  - TicoTimes, 16 June 2025

• Police and protesters clashed in Panama on Saturday during an operation to clear a highway near the Costa Rican border, where teachers and Indigenous groups are protesting against a pension reform that could privatize their pensions.
  - TicoTimes, 16 June 2025

• The USA government urges Americans to avoid travel to Nicaragua. Despite a flurry of positive reports in the travel press, USA officials say Americans should avoid Nicaragua because it is an authoritarian regime.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 June 2025

• The government must stop AI destroying large numbers of white-collar jobs before it is too late
  - The Hill, 15 June 2025

• Costa Rica's reputation as an environmental leader is under scrutiny. A formal complaint filed by environmental lawyer Marco Levy has called for a criminal investigation into Minister of Environment and Energy Franz Tattenbach. The accusations? Prevarication, corruption, and favoritism that could harm the Gandoca-Manzanillo National Wildlife Refuge, a protected Ramsar site in Talamanca, Limón. This biodiverse gem, home to mangroves, flooded forests, and the Sixaola aquifer, is at the heart of a heated debate over development versus conservation.
  - Tico Times, 13 June 2025

• Workers at U.S.-based banana company Chiquita Brands in Panama ended their protests and road blockades on Wednesday after reaching an agreement over pension reforms, in response to a pension reform that removed some of their previous benefits. During the strike, Chiquita halted operations and dismissed more than 6,500 workers. The company reported losses exceeding $75 million, though local media estimate the damage at over $100 million. Sources close to the negotiations said that unions are also seeking agreements with both the company and the Panamanian government to reinstate dismissed workers.
  - Tico Times, 12 June 2025

• Antigovernment protests in Bolivia leave multiple people dead. Tensions remain high in the South American country as an economic crisis converges with frustration over elections.
  - Al Jazeera, 12 June 2025

• A political titan in Argentina is sentenced to prison for defrauding the government. The Supreme Court confirmed a corruption conviction against Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a former president, cementing a six-year sentence and blocking a planned political comeback.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 June 2025

• Scientists studying ancient human remains uncovered in Colombia have found that the people they were researching have no known ancestors or modern descendants.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 11 June 2025

• Zhōngguó states that it "respects Panama Canal neutrality", amid a warning over the CK Hutchinson port deal. Analyst says comment by head of canal authority that Panama may potentially take control of ports is noteworthy.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 11 June 2025

• "We all live in fear": how gang violence has gripped Peru. Gangs are preying on local businesses, demanding money and unleashing violence if they refuse. A surge in extortions has traumatized many parts of the country. It doesn't help that Peru has been damaged for decades by corrupt politicians in Lima.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 June 2025

• The sale of two cargo ports near the Panama Canal to a global consortium led by Mediterranean Shipping Company threatens the Panama Canal's principle of neutrality, the canal's head Ricaurte Vasquez told the Financial Times. "If there is a significant level of concentration on terminal operators belonging to an integrated or one single shipping company, it will be at the expense of Panama's competitiveness in the market and inconsistent with neutrality."
  - Reuters 09 June 2025

• By 2030, rising seas will threaten the beaches and communities of Costa Rica - looding coastal areas, damaging infrastructure, and displacing communities.
  - Tico Times, 09 June 2025

• Tether's USDT stablecoin is seen on retail pricetags in Bolivia
  - Zero Hedge, 09 June 2025

• Farmers in the European Union continue their protests as they battle threats from the Mercosur Trade Agreement, and imports from Ukraine
  - Zero Hedge, 09 June 2025

• Why it could be a good time to buy shares of Tecnoglass, based in Colombia
  - Insider Monkey, 09 June 2025

• The soaring price of gold attracts illegal miners - and armed gangs - to the jungles of Colombia. Drug cartels in Colombia add illegal gold-mining proceeds to their booming business.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 June 2025

• Investors seeking higher bond yields cause a $331 billion wave of emerging bond sales
  - Bloomberg, 08 June 2025

• Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe, a potential presidential contender, was fighting for his life in hospital after being shot during a campaign event in Bogota on Saturday, according to his wife and government and party authorities. He is a member of the opposition conservative Democratic Center party.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 08 June 2025

• Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe, a potential presidential contender, was fighting for his life in hospital after being shot during a campaign event in Bogota on Saturday, according to his wife and government and party authorities. He is a member of the opposition conservative Democratic Center party.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 June 2025

• Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe, a potential presidential contender, was fighting for his life in hospital after being shot during a campaign event in Bogota on Saturday, according to his wife and government and party authorities. He is a member of the opposition conservative Democratic Center party.
  - Zero Hedge, 08 June 2025

• Haiti, with a majority of Black people, suffers greatly a new as the white Trump blocks all travel from Haiti to the USA. Sick children, families and businesses are among the many people in Black Haiti, a country plagued by gang violence, likely to be hit hard by a travel ban by the White Trump
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 June 2025

• "A big slap in the face": mostly Black people in Africa are jolted and insulted by the white Trumps' new travel ban
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 June 2025

• Fishermen in Costa Rica sound the alarm about the overfishing crisis in the Gulf of Nicoya. Illegal fishing, overexploitation, and institutional neglect are pushing fish stocks to the brink, leaving coastal communities like Isla Chira facing economic hardship and potential hunger. Local voices, aired at a recent Legislative Assembly forum, paint a stark picture of a region in distress, with authorities failing to enforce critical protections.
  - TicoTimes, 06 June 2025

• The president of Panama appeals to a higher power as nearly 2 months of peotests by banana workers, and others, disrupt Panama
  - Associated Press, 06 June 2025

• The environmental contradictions of Costa Rica. While the country internationally declares ambitious goals to protect the environment - decarbonization and conservation, Costa Rica continues to spend public monies to promote activities that degrade the environment
  - La Nacion, 05 June 2025

• The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, considers an award Españna has bestowed on the Anthropology Musum of México as a step towards an apology for the abuses committed by Spanish Christian conquistadors centuries, an apology that Españna has never given
  - La Nacion, 04 June 2025

• Companies in the USA are scrambling to move supply chains to manage Trump's tax/tariff trade war. The Dominican Republican could be a place where they can build new manufacturing facilities.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 04 June 2025

• The ambitious plans of Colombia for wind energy development, especially in the resource-rich La Guajira region alongside the Caribbean Sea, are facing serious setbacks as major companies pull out and projects stall, industry experts say. Only two wind farms are partially operating today, with a combined capacity of less than 32 megawatts. Key obstacles include limited grid connection infrastructure in La Guajira, recent regulatory changes that reduce financial returns and complex social and leadership challenges.
  - Associated Press, 03 June 2025

• A colossal cloud of dust from the Sahara desert is smothering the islands of the Cariffean en route to the USA. The hazy skies unleashed sneezes, coughs and watery eyes across the Caribbean, with local forecasters warning that those with allergies, asthma and other conditions should remain indoors or wear face masks if outdoors.
  - Associated Press, 02 June 2025

• A colossal cloud of dust from the Sahara desert is smothering the islands of the Cariffean en route to the USA. The hazy skies unleashed sneezes, coughs and watery eyes across the Caribbean, with local forecasters warning that those with allergies, asthma and other conditions should remain indoors or wear face masks if outdoors.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 June 2025

• VIDEO: what the rise in crime in Costa Rica means for tourists seeking 'pura vida'
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 01 June 2025

• "We are under a dictatorship!": six years into his rule, El Salvador's president Nayib Bukele tightens his grip. The government has signficiantly reduced gang violence, but opponents say it has come at the cost of mass incarceration of 87,000 people, and the erosion of civil liberties. And he pays no attention to the drug addiction of the USA causing the crime from drug trafficking of cocaine through El Salvador. Bukele has also long faced allegations that he negotiated the peaceful security situation in El Salvador through back-door dealings with the gangs.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 01 June 2025

• Howler monkeys in Costa Rica are facing a growing threat from bot fly larvae infestations, and new research points to tourism and land use changes as key drivers. The bot fly larvae burrow under the skin of howler monkeys, creating painful nodules that can lead to infections and weaken the animals. The study suggests that stress from constant human presence, noise, and habitat disruption weakens their immune systems, making them more susceptible to parasites.
  - Tico Times, 31 May 2025

• Socialism, not the USA economic embargo, explains nearly all of the poverty of Cuba
  - Zero Hedge, 30 May 2025

• Industrial farms in Costa Rica are harming wildlife and workers. Costa Rica has one of the highest rates of pesticide use per capita of anywhere in the world. In monoculture farming, especially for crops like bananas and pineapples, a variety of chemicals are used, including not only pesticides, but also herbicides and fungicides, often in high quantities. These chemicals carry exotic names such as mancozeb, chlorothalonil, paraquat, and glyphosate. They are used to control pests, weeds, and diseases. The common denominator they share is that their use is strictly to maximize production in the most efficient way possible, with the numerous negatives that accompany their use conveniently ignored.
  - Tico Times, 30 May 2025

• The resolution mechanisms of the Central America - USA trade treaty - CAFTA - were useless in preventing the unilateral imposition of the 10% tariff on Costa Rica by Trump, and now the Costa Rica is negotiating to eliminate barriers at a very uneven table that greatly much huger USA.
  - Q Costa Rica, 30 May 2025

• Extreme weather and human activity (agriculture, drug trafficking, illegal gold mining) are "accelerating the degradation of the Amazon" river in Colombia
  - Colombia Reports, 29 May 2025

• Authoritarian Venezuela's shadow war with Guyana is escalatin over the oil-rich region of Essequibo that is part of Guyana but historically claimed by Venezuela.
  - OilPrice.com, 27 May 2025

• The Constitutional Court of Colombia has ordered the Catholic Christian Church to share information with journalists about child sex abuse and child rape committed by its Christian priests. Journalists have revealed 517 cases of sexual abuse and rape by Christian clergymen. Instead of honesty and repentance, the Catholic Church preferred to protect the identities of alleged Christian predators and rapist.
  - Colombia Reports, 27 May 2025

• The authoritarian government of Venezuela just held an election for an oil-rich region, Essequibo. The main problem is the region belongs to neighboring Guyana. The 125,000 inhabitants of Essequibo, who comprise about 15% of Guyana's population, did not take part in Venezuela's elections for the region.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 25 May 2025

• Cuba is now a strategic battleground for Zhōngguó against the USA. The short distance to the United States from Cuba allows Zhōngguó an important intelligence observation point and a way to create a counterbalance of world support for Taiwan.
  - Zero Hedge, 24 May 2025

• Thousands of people marched in Panama on Friday to protest the arrest of two trade-union leaders who have spearheaded demonstrations against the right-wing government of President José Raúl Mulino. Two officials from SUNTRACS - the largest construction union in Panama - are being held on money-laundering charges, while the union's leftwing chief, Saúl Méndez, has sought asylum in the Bolivian embassy to avoid detention.
  - Tico Times, 24 May 2025

• Chiquita's subsidiary in Panama will fire up to 5000 people, workers who have been on strike since April, workers seeking reforms to social security
  - La Republica, 23 May 2025

• Costa Rica is taking bold steps to protect its vital bee populations with the launch of the Bee Lab, a beekeeping laboratory in Naranjo aimed at safeguarding over one million bees and enhancing agricultural productivity. By integrating advanced technology and regenerative practices, the initiative promises to increase coffee and citrus crop yields by up to 25%, supporting farmers and ecosystems alike.
  - Tico Times, 21 May 2025

• A prominent anti-corruption lawyer is arrested in authoritarian Catholic Christian El Salvador. Ruth López was detained Sunday in what rights groups say represents a "dangerous escalation" in President (and Trump buddy) Nayib Bukele's crackdown on dissent.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 May 2025

• Tourism in Costa Rica flounders between insecurity and overpricing. Local merchants lament high prices, coupled with a low exchange rate, which leaves them with less income, even though they must continue buying products at the same price.
  - Q Costa Rica, 19 May 2025

• A female 'influencer' in Colombia is fatally shot, just days after a livestreaming female influencer in México was killed in a similar murder. The two deaths have reignited conversations about femicide in heavily Catholic Christian countries in Latin America .
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 19 May 2025

• Zhōngguó is taking advantage of Trump's hostile tax/tariff trade wars by improving its relations with Latin American nations
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 19 May 2025

• How the new pope of the Catholic Christian church shutdown abuse/scandal-ridden Catholic Christian society, Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, which had deep ties to the powerful and wealthy Catholic Christian of Peru who tolerated the sexual crimes committed by the society. While dozens of young Peruvians have alleged they were victimized or bullied by Figari (the founder) and other senior members of the SVC, the topic remains taboo in ultra-Catholic Christian Peru, and only a few have chosen to make details of their allegations public. The founder, Figari, had sodomized some of his recruits and forced them to fondle him and one another. He liked to watch them "experience pain, discomfort and fear", which is nowhere a message of his Jesus. The rapist society still retained powerful supporters, despite allegations. The Catholic Christian archdiocese of Denver said it was "shocked and saddeded" with the Vatican's crackdown on the abusive Christian society. How many Catholic Christians in Peru knew about the sexual crimes, and did nothing?
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 18 May 2025

• In the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica, the Madre de Dios and Santa Marta lagoons are reeling from a mass fish kill has left local communities and businesses in Matina and Siquirres sounding the alarm. Dead fish, including snook, sea bass, rainbow bass, mojarra, and tilapia, have been washing up for days, with locals pointing to chemical runoff from nearby banana plantations as the cause. "When it rains, all the pesticides they spray wash into the rivers and lagoons." This is the third fish kill in eight months, but the scale this time is staggering. The gvoernment of Costa Rica has not done much to help. Despite being an eco-tourism destination, agriculture in Costa Rica uses a huge amount of pesticides.
  - Tico Times, 18 May 2025

• Secret nose job allegations, 'Rolexgate' and the curse of being president in corrupt, extremely Catholic Christian, Peru. The current president, Dina Boluarte, has a disapproval rating of 93%. The most serious investigation against her involve the deaths of more than 60 people during a crackdown by government security forces on the protests that followed the ouster of her predecessor Pedro Castillo in December 2022; the more lurid include allegations she accepted Rolex watches and other jewelry as bribes and transported a fugitive politician in a presidential vehicle.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 18 May 2025

• Hundreds of supporters of Bolivia's ex-leader, Evo Morales, clash with police in front of the Electoral Court, in an effort to secure his presidential candidacy, which the Court had earlier ruled is inconstitutional for a fourth term as president.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 17 May 2025

• Colombia's government has applied to join a development bank based in Zhōngguó, another sign of Latin America's drift away from the USA as the Trump administration's foreign aid cuts, trade barriers and crackdown on immigration spurs many leaders in the region to seek closer ties with Zhōngguó, the geopolitical rival of the USA.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 17 May 2025

• Hundreds of farmers in Panama protested on Friday on the Indio river, aboard boats, to oppose the construction of a reservoir for the Panama Canal that would force many families to relocate. In about thirty motorized canoes, some 400 farmers traveled along the Indio River, whose waters would be dammed into an artificial lake to guarantee freshwater for the inter-oceanic canal.
  - Tico Times, 16 May 2025

• Catholic Christian México has the fourth-highest rate of femicide in Latin America and the Caribbean, with Catholic Christian Honduras having the highest rate of femicide, followed by the Dominican Republic
  - Al Jazeera, 16 May 2025

• Environmental corruption in Costa Rica: citizens of Costa Rica are fined/jailed for building too close to the ocean (closer than 200 meters to the high tide line). Meanwhile, luxury hotels, many owned by foreign investors, continue to operate in ecologically sensitive areas, often with permits granted under questionable circumstances. Critics, including local advocacy groups, argue that the Ministry of Environment's selective enforcement disproportionately targets vulnerable Costa Ricans while shielding powerful tourism interests.
  - Tico Times, 16 May 2025

• The fishing sector in Costa Rica, vital to its economy and food security, faces mounting challenges from overexploitation, inadequate data, and weak governance, according to a new report urging sweeping reforms to ensure sustainability.
  - Tico Times, 16 May 2025

• Incumbent Luis Arce quits the presidential race in Bolivia, amid slumping support. Arce's political mentor Evo Morales continues to push his candidacy for a fourth term, despite legal setbacks and controversy.
  - Al Jazeera, 15 May 2025

• Zhōngguó is building megaports in South America to feed its need for crops. The trade war with Trump has heightened Zhōngguó's need to develop ports from which to ship South America's soybeans, corn and other foodstuffs that are the only viable alternative to agricultural exports from the USA.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 15 May 2025

• Zhōngguó and Colombia have signed a joint cooperation plan on the Belt and Road Initiative. Zhōngguó is ready to import more high-quality products from Colombia, back its firms in investing and doing business there and join in infrastructure construction.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 14 May 2025

• Zhōngguó hopes for a "golden decade" in relations with Latin America and the Caribbean. Zhōngguó joins the regional socioeconomic organization, CELAC, in backing free trade and "more democratic international system amid the tussle for influence with USA"
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 May 2025

• Zhōngguó hopes for a "golden decade" in relations with Latin America and the Caribbean. Zhōngguó joins the regional socioeconomic organization, CELAC, in backing free trade and "more democratic international system amid the tussle for influence with USA"
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 14 May 2025

• Nu Holdings, the listed entity which runs Brazilian digital lender Nubank, posted on Tuesday a 37% increase in its adjusted net profit from a year earlier, slightly missing analysts' estimates.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 13 May 2025

• The director of Civil Aviation in Costa Rica, along with the former minister of Public Works, and other government officials are arrested in connection with allegedly corruption in contracts to repair the Daniel Oduber airport in the north of Costa Rica
  - Q Costa Rica, 13 May 2025

• The number of ships traversing the Panama Canal rose to 34 each day in April
  - La Republica, 13 May 2025

• Xi Jinping, the leader of Zhōngguó, woos Latin America with promises of cooperation on technology. Xi Jinping has suggested expanding trade ties beyond buying commodities as he continues to rally nations in the face of Trump's taxes/tariffs.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 May 2025

• Global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels threatens the banana, the fourth most important food crop in peril as Latin America and Caribbean suffer from slow-onset climate disaster. Rising temperatures, extreme weather and climate-related pests are pummeling banana-growing countries such as Guatemala, Costa Rica and Colombia, reducing yields and devastating rural communities across the region.
  - The Guardian, 12 May 2025

• El Salvador put Trump deportees in its worst prison. Now their families are suing. A lawsuit filed with the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights seeks the release of Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States and jailed in a notorious Salvadoran prison in El Salvador.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 May 2025

• Costa Rica is banning fishing in its Gulf of Nicoya from May to July -- to protect populations of shrimp, corvina, snapper, and white mullet during their breeding season
  - Tico Times, 11 May 2025

• Former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli left the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama City, where he had sought refuge more than a year ago after the courts upheld a criminal money laundering sentence against him, and headed to Colombia where he has received political asylum
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 11 May 2025

• President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil arrives in Zhōngguó as Beijing decries the "bullying" of Latin America by the authoritarian Trump. Da Silva is in Zhōngguó for a state visit and to attend gathering of Latin American leaders as Zhōngguó seeks closer ties with region.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 11 May 2025

• President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil arrives in Zhōngguó as Beijing decries the "bullying" of Latin America by the authoritarian Trump. Da Silva is in Zhōngguó for a state visit and to attend gathering of Latin American leaders as Zhōngguó seeks closer ties with region.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 May 2025

• Exports from Zhōngguó to the USA plummet, due to Trump's tax/tariff trade war. The drop in shipments to the USA was offset by an increase in exports from Zhōngguó to Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 10 May 2025

• Brazil and Zhōngguó discuss a railway from the Chancay port outside of Lima, Peru, through the Acre state of Brazil (north of Cusco) to the Atlantic port of Ilheus in Bahia, Brazil.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 09 May 2025

• An agreement signed by the Panama and the USA a month ago does not allow for the installation of USA military bases in Panama, as claimed by some political sectors in Panama, according to newly appointed USA Ambassador Kevin Cabrera.
  - Tico Times, 08 May 2025

• The USA Special Envoy for Latin America warned the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, that attempts to strengthen ties with Zhōngguó may come with economic repercussions from the USA. "Petro's rapprochement with Zhōngguó is a great opportunity [for the USA to import] roses from Ecuador and coffee from Central America."
  - Colombia Reports, 07 May 2025

• The USA is achieving some political wins in Latin America against Zhōngguó
  - The Hill, 07 May 2025

• How Trump's ending of USAID threatens the fragile peace in Colombia. The Trump administration cut off aid to Colombia that has been vital to keeping the promises of a peace deal with a major rebel group, as violence worsens in many corners of the country.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 May 2025

• 13 workers found killed at gold mine in Peru. The men were killed in a region that has seen growing conflict over access to ore in recent years. The mine has also been a hotbed of illegal gold mining.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 May 2025

• Zhōngguó inauguró una ruta marítima en Perí y Brazil para competir con el Canal de Panam´. Mientras todos tienen sus ojos puestos en lo que ha pasado en el canal, Pekín abre esta ruta para evitar el transporte transatl´ntico, abaratar costos y traer los bienes brasileñnos por tren hasta el puerto peruano de Chancay.
  - El Nuevo Siglo, 06 May 2025

• Thousands of people in Panama march to protest against an increased USA military presence near the Panama Canal, and a copper mine project owned by a company based in Canada
  - Tico Times, 06 May 2025

• USA spy agencies do not think that Venezuela is directing a gang in the USA, the Tren de Aragua. The release of the memo further undercuts Trump's rationale for using the Alien Enemies Act to deport scores immigrants from Venezuela to a horrid prison in El Salvador.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 May 2025

• Hispanic shoppers in the USA are spending less on groceries, putting pressure on consumer companies
  - Comcast's CNBC, 06 May 2025

• Sales of electric vehicles soared in Colombia, but battery recycling startups struggle to keep pace.
  - Rest of World, 05 May 2025

• Trump's favorite dictator in Central America, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, ordered police via social media on Monday to arrest five heads of bus companies in the Central American country after they defied his order to offer free transport for a week following a major highway closure. The order was another example of Bukele's authoritarian tactics.
  - Associated Press, 05 May 2025

• Why the Panama Canal is a big, long-term prize in Trump's global trade war. Forty percent of all U.S. container traffic travels through the Panama Canal every year, and in all, $270 billion in cargo annually.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 05 May 2025

• The world is finally seeing how very dangerous is President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 May 2025

• The top five producers of silver in the world are: Mexico, Zhōngguó, Peru, Chile and then Bolivia
  - Zero Hedge, 03 May 2025

• Menor inflación y el crecimiento influyeron el Banco de la República de Colombia en reducción de tasas de interés a 9,25%
  - La Republica, 02 May 2025

• Zhōngguó accuses the USA of sabotaging its relations with Costa Rica
  - Q Costa Rica, 02 May 2025

• Tourism in Costa Rica is expected to suffer, as Americans with less money (due to Trump's tax/tariff trade war) decrease their travel to Costa Rica and other countries in Central America.
  - Q Costa Rica, 02 May 2025

• The Central Pacific beaches of Costa Rica are among the most contaminated in Central America with plastic bottles and caps. "Beaches in Central America had the highest abundance of collected items, which could be explained by the trash generated in nearby cities and the possible influence of ocean currents, which carry bottles from other regions."
  - Q Costa Rica, 02 May 2025

• The port of Guangzhou in Zhōngguó has opened a direct shipping route to Chancay port in Peru. The direct route reaches Peru in about 30 days and reduces logistics costs by around 20%. The new route will accelerate the connection between Guangzhou Nansha Port and Latin American ports such as Mexico's Port of Manzanillo and Chile's Port of San Antonio.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 29 April 2025

• The modernization of the Port of Callao (next to Lima) strengthens the ambition of Peru for dominance in regional trade
  - Rio Times Online, 28 April 2025

• Trump wants to force Panama and Egypt to allow American ships to traverse the Panama and Suez Canals ... for free
  - Zero Hedge, 27 April 2025

• A visit to Cuba reveals statis, inequality and desperation
  - The Hill, 27 April 2025

• Why Pope Francis could not convince more fellow Latin Americans to his version of Christianity. Secularism and the rise of evangelical congregations threaten the Catholic Church's [unhealthy] dominance in the region.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 23 April 2025

• The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, is stunned after President "Donald Duck" revoked Petro's visa to the USA. Trump is upset with Petro because Petro opposes his efforts to expel people from the USA - especially when Colombia refused planeloads of deportees from the USA
  - The Daily Beast, 23 April 2025

• The long racist history of lawlessness in USA policy towards Latin America
  - The Intercept, 22 April 2025

• $300,000,000 - Opioid drug traffickers Walgreens to pay $300 million to settle allegations in the USA that it illegally filled millions of invalid prescriptions for opioids and other controlled substances. Unlike Colombian and Mexican drug traffickers, none of the white executives will go to jail.
  - CNBC.com, 21 April 2025

• Cuba is running out of money, and is targeting foreign-company profits as it shrinks public bread rations
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 21 April 2025

• Panama City, Panama, approves the use of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for payments for taxes, fees and permits
  - Zero Hedge, 18 April 2025

• A group of human rights lawyers is suing Costa Rica, alleging the Central American nation violated the rights of dozens of migrant children by detaining them in a rural camp for nearly two months after they were deported by Trump from the USA in February.
  - Associated Press, 18 April 2025

• The government of Sweden's decision to sell JAS 39 Gripen fighter jets from Saab to Peru sparks a new weapons race in Latin America. Colombia recently decided to buy the Gripen jets as well.
  - BulgarianMilitary.com, 17 April 2025

• The USA is preparing to block the sale of the General Electric F414-GE-39E engine, a key component of Sweden's Saab Gripen E fighter jet, to the Air Force of Colombia. Is Peru next to be denied?
  - BulgarianMilitary.com, 17 April 2025

• The Panama Port deal drama reveals the new great game of ports and chokepoints
  - Zero Hedge, 17 April 2025

• The president of much-Christian France says that a racist historic injustice was imposed on Haiti when it was forced to pay a colossal indemnity to France in exchange for its independence 200 years ago, much of the money paid to racist slave-owners as compensation for losing their non-white human 'properties'.
  - Associated Press, 17 April 2025

• The president of much-Christian France says that a racist historic injustice was imposed on Haiti when it was forced to pay a colossal indemnity to France in exchange for its independence 200 years ago, much of the money paid to racist slave-owners as compensation for losing their non-white human 'properties'.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 April 2025

• Colombia has declared a nationwide health emergency after at least 34 people died of yellow fever
  - BBC, 17 April 2025

• Colombia has declared a nationwide health emergency after at least 34 people died of yellow fever
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 17 April 2025

• How guns/swords, not ploughshares, flow from the Christian USA to gang-ravaged Haiti, due to lax laws in the USA, especially in gun-crazy Florida where many guns are illegally shipped from
  - BBC, 17 April 2025

• A coalition citizens in Panama on Wednesday asked Panama's Supreme Court to declare "unconstitutional" a controversial agreement signed last week that allows the USA to deploy troops in the Canal Zone
  - Tico Times, 16 April 2025

• Nadine Humala, the former first lady of Peru, seeks asylum in the Embassy of Brazil in Lima, as she and her husband, ex-president Pllanta Humala are sentenced to 15 years in prison on money laundering charges linked to illegal campaign contributions
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 16 April 2025

• attacks health care for the global poor, the "blessed meek". He has cancelled the USA visas of foreign officials of countries that pay the government of Cuba for doctors and nurses.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 April 2025

• Copper imports from Chile, the top supplier of the metal to the USA, do not threaten the national security interests of the USA, the government of Chile said in a letter to Trump's administration, which is considering taxes/tariffs on imports of copper needed for electric vehicles and myriad industrial uses
  - Thomson's Reuters, 15 April 2025

• The flawed oversight of pesticides in Europe may be causing a silent epidemic of Parkinson's disease. A synthetic drug, MPTP, is a neurotoxic contaminant that can destroy parts of the brain that quickly caused Parkinson's disease-like symptoms. But MPTP is chemically similar to paraquet, a widely used weedkiller that, for decades, had been sprayed on farms across the United States and Europe. While now banned in Europe, it is still used in the USA, Central America (except for Costa Rica), South America (except for Brazil, Chile and Peru) and much of Africa and Asia. Its producer, Syngenta, is being sued by thousands of people.
  - Politico, 14 April 2025

• The controller general of Panama said CK Hutchison, a Hong Kong conglomerate, did not properly renew its license to operate two ports that are part of a $19 billion deal involving BlackRock.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 April 2025

• Panama casts doubt on the deal to sell CK Hutchinson's Panama Canal ports to BlackRock. Panama's top auditor said CK Hutchison owes the government $300 million, posing a hurdle to a plan touted by Trump to bring the ports under control of the USA.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 April 2025

• CK Hutchison Holdings has defended the contract that has allowed it to run two ports at the Panama Canal since 1997, saying the concession was "validly executed and approved by law", and denying it failed to pay US$1.2 billion to the country, as had been claimed in a legal challenge by two lawyers.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 09 April 2025

• $1,300,000,000 - The Comptroller General of Panama will file a lawsuit against the officials who authorized the renewal of a 25-year port concession to a company led by CK Hutchison. An audit of the renewed contract has so far determined that Panama "left $1.3 billion on the table".
  - Thomson's Reuters, 07 April 2025

• Codelco, the state-owned copper producer in Chile, boosted production in the first three months of 2025 and was still bullish about long-term prospects for global demand despite an escalating trade war between the USA and Zhōngguó, Chairman Maximo Pacheco said on Monday.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 07 April 2025

• $50,000,000+ - In San Pedro, Argentina, 16,000 people, a fifth of the population, signed up for a cryptocurrency exchange where everyone won. Until they didn't, losing a lot of money to pump-and-dump schemes using meme coins, the scam run by a woman called "La China". All of the trades on one exchange, RainbowEx, were fake - the nightly swaps of Tether for memecoins through the crypto exchange were pure show - a pur Ponzi scheme. Over $50 million was stolen.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 April 2025

• For bitcoin bulls who self-custody their cryptocurrencies, the global risks are growing. Some cryptocurrency investors prefer to custody their own digital assets like bitcoin with private keys stored on hardware wallets in 'cold storage' versus using crypto brokerage 'hot wallers' and other third-party digital custody options. Wars and extreme weather, with examples in recent years from Israel to California, show that keeping crypto in the personal version of a bank vault has its own set of unique and evolving risks.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 06 April 2025

• A.P. Moller, the main shareholder of Maersk, makes $1.3 billion bid to buy the remaining 53% it doesn't own of tugboat operator Svitzer
  - Wall Street Journal, 02 April 2025

• Denmark's Maersk bus the Panama Canal Railway Company, now owned by Canadian Pacific Kansas City and the Lanco Group
  - Thomson's Reuters, 02 April 2025

• For criticizing Trump, the USA revokes the visa of Nobel Peace Price winner and former president of 'everyone likes' Costa Rica, Óscar Arias Sánchez, who described Trump as acting like a "Roman emperor".
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 April 2025

• Oil refiners in Bharat seek alternatives to buying oil from Rossiya after Trump's threatens more taxes/tariffs
  - Comcast's CNBC, 01 April 2025

• Trump is imposing taxes/tariffs on imports of products from countries that buy oil from Venezuela, an unprecedented move that increases trade uncertainty. Any country that buys oil from Venezuela will face 25% "secondary taxes/tariffs" on all of its trade with the USA. The tariffs will primarily affect Zhōngguó, the largest importer of Venezuela oil. Bharat and Spain would also face levies unless the U.S. decides to grant exemptions for some countries.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 01 April 2025

• Shares of CK Hutchinson fall 5% as mounting pressure by the government of Zhōngguó delays its deal to sell its Panama Canal ports (and other ports) to BlackRock, news of which had sen the stock up 22% in early March
  - Zero Hedge, 31 March 2025

• Haiti continues to suffer from criminal gangs that possess hundreds of thousaands of guns, none of which are made in Haiti. No surprise, the vast majority of guns are smuggled in from the USA, most shipped through ports in southern Florida.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 March 2025

• The former president of Panama, Ricardo Martinelli, will leave the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama on Monday, where he has been hiding to evade a criminal prison sentence for money laundering, and will travel to authoritarian governed Nicaragua, despite an Interpol arrest warrant.
  - Tico Times, 30 March 2025

• Large-scale shortages of water on the Caribbean isle of Martinique cause great anger with rule by France. Like many contentious issues in Martinique, water is intertwined with questions of class and race, including the prominence of a handful of families descended from white owners of enslaved non-white people - slave owners who were compensated for the abolition of the crime of slavery. The white creole families comprise about 1% of the population, but control swaths of the economy on the island of 350,000 people, the vast majority whom are not-white. More than a quarter of people are poor, a higher rate than in many Caribbean islands and twice that of mainland France.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 30 March 2025

• CK Hutchison will not sign deal next week to sell strategic Panama ports to BlackRock, a deal done to appease Trump. The chief market regulator for Zhōngguó will carry out an antitrust review on the Panama port deal in accordance with law to protect fair competition and safeguard public interests.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 29 March 2025

• CK Hutchison will not sign deal next week to sell strategic Panama ports to BlackRock, a deal done to appease Trump. The chief market regulator for Zhōngguó will carry out an antitrust review on the Panama port deal in accordance with law to protect fair competition and safeguard public interests.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 29 March 2025

• How global heating and climate change could devastate banana farming in Costa Rica. Rising heat, combined with labor and export infrastructure demands, will shrink suitable land by 60% and lower yields in most current zones.
  - Tico Times, 28 March 2025

• CK Hutchinson, based in Hong Kong, "will not sign a Panama Canal port deal next week" (a deal with BlackRock, forced by Trump), after the government of Zhōngguó announces an antitrust investigation into the deal
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 28 March 2025

• CK Hutchinson, based in Hong Kong, "will not sign a Panama Canal port deal next week" (a deal with BlackRock, forced by the authoritarian Trump), after the government of Zhōngguó announces an antitrust investigation into the deal
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 28 March 2025

• Trump's gift to the authoritarian leaders of Cuba: dismantling Radio Martí, a federally-funded news outlet aimed at Communist Cuba.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 26 March 2025

• CK Hutchinson gets another warning for the government of Zhōngguó over its plans to sell its Panama Canal port operations to BlackRock. The government of Zhōngguó's top officials in Hong Kong publish an article quoting residents urging CK Hutchinson to resist pressure from the Trump administration, and to stand on the right side of the history of Zhōngguó.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 26 March 2025

• The president of Peru, Dina Boluarte, calls for general elections amid security crisis and yearslong political instability
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 25 March 2025

• En 23 años, el Banco de la República de Colombia subió las tasas 54 veces, y las bajó en 48
  - Portafolio, 25 March 2025

• Trump says any country buying oil from Venezuela will face a 25% tax/tariff on exports to the USA
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 24 March 2025

• The CEO of BlackRock, Larry Fink, made Trump happy with a deal to buy the Panama Canal port operations of CK Hutchinson. The cost to BlackRock may be an unhappy Zhōngguó. The government accuses CK Hutchinson of "prioritizing profit over everything, disregarding national interests and national righteousness".
  - Apollo Global's Yahoo Finance, 2 March 2025

• How global heating and climate change are threatening the peatlands of Costa Rica
  - Tico Times, 22 March 2025

• How Cuba politically competes with the USA in the Caribbean islands, by sending doctors to help the sick. Trump's diplomacy is failing in the Caribbean. Now the Trump administration wants to end this charitable diplomany by saying such doctors are working on the islands as "forced labor", an accusation denied by leaders in the Caribbean.
  - Economist, 20 March 2025

• Sleek new electric vehicles from companies in Zhōngguó are "taking over" in emerging markets. From Bangkok to Johannesburg to Sao Paulo, companies from Zhōngguó are dominating the EV markets with high quality and competitively priced vehicles.
  - Zero Hedge, 20 March 2025

• The administration of Trump quietly lifts a ban on imports of sugar imposed on a sugar company in the Dominican Republic - Central Romana, a ban put in placed because of allegations of forced/slave labor at the company. The owners of the company, the Fanjul family, has given millions to the Republican party to help get the racist Trump re-elected. Nice return for its donations. Labor right groups expressed frustration at the change, saying that Central Romana, whose sugar had been sold in the United States under the Domino brand, had not significantly improved its labor practices. A government official in the USA, who declined to be named because the person was not authorized to speak publicly, said that the decision to rescind the rule and allow the company to begin exporting had not followed established processes.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 20 March 2025

• The dominance of the market for rare earth metals by Zhōngguó could decline in 10 years, falling from 60% of the market to 30% of the market by 2035. Mining companies in Africa, South America and Australia will win more market share, as new mines open up in these regions.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 20 March 2025

• CK Hutchinson remains silent about its $23 billion sale of its Panama Canal port operations to BlackRock (a deal forced by the authoritarian Trump). The company did not say whether it would proceed with its March 4 proposal to sell its interest in 43 ports and 199 berths in 23 countries to New York-based BlackRock and its unit Global Infrastructure Partners.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 20 March 2025

• The leader of Zhōngguó, Xi Jinping, is angered by the forced sale of CK Hutchinson's port control businesses at the Panama Canal to BlackRock. Xi is angry, in part, because CK Hutchinson, based in Hong Kong, didn't seek the approval of the government of Zhōngguó.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 19 March 2025

• Shares of CK Hutchinson dropped as much as 5%, after officials in Zhōngguó and Hong Kong criticized the company for agreeing to sell its Panama Canal ports to BlackRock
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 18 March 2025

• Families of Latin American immigrants who believe their relatives were deported by ICE (under the orders of Trump) say that their relatives were not gang members, yet are being sent to a huge draconian prison in El Salvador.
  - Disney's ABC News, 18 March 2025

• $3,400,000 - Lundin mining company not only was ordered to shut its copper mine in northern Chile aftre causing massive environmental damage, the company was fined $3.4 million
  - The Cool Down, 14 March 2025

• The fiery criticism by the government of Zhōngguó to sell its Panama port operations to BlackRock, puts pressure on the Li Ka-shing family. The US$23 billion sale is not final, but needs no approval by Zhōngguó or Hong Kong, leaving CK Hutchison to decide whether to proceed, analysts say.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 14 March 2025

• The government of Zhōngguó condemns the forced sale of port management from Hong Kong-based CK Hutchinson, to American finance giant BlackRock, with Zhōngguó asserting a right to influence in Latin America
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 March 2025

• The government of Zhōngguó condemns the forced sale of port management from Hong Kong-based CK Hutchinson, to American finance giant BlackRock, with Zhōngguó asserting a right to influence in Latin America
  - Zero Hedge, 14 March 2025

• Venezuelans in Doral, Florida, who idiotically voted strongly to support Trump, are now watching their friends and relatives being deported back to Venezuela, after Trump moved last month to revoke the temporary status that had allowed hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants to stay legally in the USA. These voters didn't expect Trump to deport their relatives. "They used us."
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 13 March 2025

• Trump asks the USA military to create plans to seize the Panama Canal "by force", which is not only illegal under international law, but would destroy the reputation of the USA.
  - The Daily Beast, 13 March 2025

• BlackRock becomes a power player in global shipping. Larry Fink's clout is on display with a $23 billion deal for ports in Panama and beyond.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 12 March 2025

• Coffee exports from Costa Rica to Europe surpass exports to the USA for the first time
  - Tico Times, 11 March 2025

• El Salvador closes a pet hospital funded by bitcoin, after a big animal welfare scandal
  - Tico Times, 09 March 2025

• Blackstone versus BlackRock: the greatest Wall Street frenemy story ever told. Stephen Schwarzman and Larry Fink are increasingly all up in each s business. Just look at BlackRock's new deal with Panama Canal.
  - Barron's, 08 March 2025

• Trump's bad economic plan to make the USA 'Argentina' again
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 March 2025

• Potosi, Bolivia: the mining town is the only place in the world where you can legally buy dynamite at retail stores
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 05 March 2025

• Dead rivers signal a growing environmental crisis in El Salvador, as the authoritarian government opens up to more mining. Environmental defenders fear that mining will contaminate, for example, the Lempa River, which flows through areas of mining potential and supplies water to 70% of the San Salvador, the country's capital. "The concentration of of gold in Salvadoran soil is one gram per ton of rock: little gold and much damage."
  - Tico Times, 05 March 2025

• In response to Trump's tax/tariff trade war, Zhōngguó will increase food imports from Latin America and Eureop, another hurt on the American farmers who voted for Trump
  - Thomson's Reuters, 05 March 2025

• Trump orders his administration to give Chevron 30 days to close its operations in Venezuela, squeezing the authoritarian Nicolas Maduro. Chevron has ramped up production in recent years to supply about 20% of the oil output of Venezuela, helping tame sky-high inflation and inject hard currency into the country's private sector.
  - Bloomberg, 04 March 2025

• Trump orders his administration to give Chevron 30 days to close its operations in Venezuela, squeezing the authoritarian Nicolas Maduro. Chevron has ramped up production in recent years to supply about 20% of the oil output of Venezuela, helping tame sky-high inflation and inject hard currency into the country's private sector.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 04 March 2025

• The president of Panama, Raul Mulino, strongly criticized Trump for lying about USA efforts to seize the Panama Canal. During an address to Congress, Trump repeated his pledhge to illegally seize the Canal from Panama.
  - The Daily Beast, 04 March 2025

• CK Hutchinson, the Hong Kong-based conglomerate that operates ports at both ends of the Panama Canal, has agreed to sell shares of its units that operate the ports to a consortium including BlackRock. In a filing, CK Hutchison Holding said Tuesday that it would sell all shares in Hutchison Port Holdings and all shares in Hutchison Port Group Holdings. The two units hold 80% of the Hutchison Ports group that operates 43 ports in 23 countries. The consortium, comprised of BlackRock (BLK), Global Infrastructure Partners and Terminal Investment Limited will acquire 90% interests in Panama Ports Company, which owns and operates the ports of Balboa and Cristobal in Panama, according to the filing.
  - Associated Press, 04 March 2025

• CK Hutchinson, the Hong Kong-based conglomerate that operates ports at both ends of the Panama Canal, has agreed to sell shares of its units that operate the ports to a consortium including BlackRock. In a filing, CK Hutchison Holding said Tuesday that it would sell all shares in Hutchison Port Holdings and all shares in Hutchison Port Group Holdings. The two units hold 80% of the Hutchison Ports group that operates 43 ports in 23 countries. The consortium, comprised of BlackRock (BLK), Global Infrastructure Partners and Terminal Investment Limited will acquire 90% interests in Panama Ports Company, which owns and operates the ports of Balboa and Cristobal in Panama, according to the filing.
  - New York Post, 04 March 2025

• Jose Mulino, the presiden of Panama, will only take a decision regarding the future of the Cobre Panama mine after he resolves the issue of the social security policy of Panama, a supplier of the Cobre Panama mine said after a meeting with the Panamanian president. But before a decision on the mine is taken, the government has to approve the preservation and safety management plan that would allow First Quantum to export 120,000 tons of copper concentrate that is stuck in the mine.
  - Bloomberg, 26 February 2025

• "Everyone wants to go back home" - inside the deplacement crisis in Catatumbo, Colombia. Since January 18, FARC dissidents who refused the 2016 peace deal have clashed with members of the National Liberation Army (ELN), another rebel group. Confronted with kidnappings, shootings and explosions, tens of thousands of people in Catatumbo have since abandoned their homes.
  - Al Jazeera, 26 February 2025

• Trump announces an inquiry that could result in new taxes/tariffs on imoprts of copper. The biggest imports of copper come from Chile, which would be hurt economically with higher taxes/tariffs. As would consumers in the USA, who would pay more for products using copper.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 26 February 2025

• JP Morgan no ve a Colombia como un destino atractivo de inversión actualmente, teniendo en cuenta factores como los riesgos internos, el estado de las tasas de interés y los impactos de la reforma persional.
  - Portafolio, 25 February 2025

• Deporting migrants to countries in Central America remove many political and legal hurdles for the Trump administration. How far can the tactic go before these nations reach a breaking point? As the president of Costa Rica said: "We are helping the economically powerful brother from the north, who, if he puts a tax on free trade zones, will wreck our economies.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 25 February 2025

• Another economic policy of Trump: while he is flooding Latin American companies with immigrants expelled from the USA, and threatening new taxes/tariffs on their imports - both acts harmful to the economies of these countries, Trump is creating new opportunities in Latin America for Zhōngguó
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 24 February 2025

• The Jícaro reef, located in Culebra Bay, Guanacaste, Costa Rica, has died. According to records from the Center for Marine Science and Limnology Research (Cimar-UCR), which has been monitoring the area since the 1990s, its decline is due to a combination of factors such as increasing water temperature, mass tourism, and pollution caused by urban growth.
  - Tico Times, 23 February 2025

• Coffee prices are at a 50-year high. Producers are not celebrating. Climate change and global heating are causing the higher prices, and coffee growers are worried about whether they can adapt.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 February 2025

• A 2016 expansion of the Panama Canal helped bigger ships move through the waterway. But it created an unintended side effect: saltwater fish from both oceans are now swimming into the canal's main freshwater lake, pushing out local species and threatening nearby communities
  - The Cool Down, 22 February 2025

• Another group of voters who voted for Trump are suffering. Will Trump's decision to end Temporary Protected Status for 300,000 Venezuelan immigrants dim the strong support for him with the Venezuelan community in Florida, such as in Doral - "Doralzuela"? Venezuelan Americans, including the people who voted for Trump, were aghast when Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, justified the decision to end TPS by saying that conditions had improved in Venezuela.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 February 2025

• Trump wants to seize the Panama Canal from Panama. This would force the USA to assume responsibility for a crisis confronting the Canal: more frequent, intense droughts have put the vital shipping route into crisis mode and pushed authorities to pursue a controversial plan to dam a river in an effort to secure its survival -- an act that would flood the homes of thousands of people.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 21 February 2025

• As Trump 'exports' illegal immigrants, hundreds of these people are trapped in a hotel in Panama. Trump has asked Panama to take in hundreds of people who can't easily be sent back to their countries. Many say they are in danger. They were stripped of their passports and most of their cellphones, they said, and then locked in a hotel, barred from seeing lawyers and told they would soon be sent to a makeshift camp near the Panamanian jungle.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 February 2025

• With tensions between the USA and Zhōngguó soaring, many tech businesses are accelerating moves to shift production out of Zhōngguó, offering opportunities for countries in Asia and Latin America to move up the value chain.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 18 February 2025

• Environmental groups in El Salvador fight President Nayib Bukele over expansion of gold mining in El Salvador. . The environmentalists pointed out that the government and mining advocates have systematically orchestrated "smear" and "mockery" campaigns against them to "generate hatred" and criminalize protests against mining defended by Bukele.
  - Tico Times, 16 February 2025

• $5,000,000 - Government regulators in Colombia fine 4 companies a combined total of $5,000,000 for using milk whey in their milk products, which is prohibited by law
  - La Republica, 13 February 2025

• How Venezuela helps fuel violence in Colombia. After finding refuge and building power in Venezuela, ELN, a decades-old rebel group has waged the worst violence in Colombia in a generation, setting off troubling regional tensions.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 February 2025

• Colombia pagará 25% por aranceles/tariffs de acero/steel y aluminum a los Estados Unidos
  - El Nuevo Siglo, 11 February 2025

• Estas son las cinco razones por las cuales el dólar se negocia por debajo de $4.200 de pesos Colombianos. La confianza en la política macroeconómica del Banco de la República, y una pausa a la política arancelaria de Trump, entre motivos.
  - La Republica, 10 February 2025

• Trump's claim that Zhōngguó controls the Panama Canal has placed a Hong Kong tycoon and his conglomerate at the heart of a showdown between the United States and Zhōngguó. That sprawling company, CK Hutchison Holdings, is one of Hong Kong's most valuable publicly listed firms and counts some of the world's biggest investors as shareholders. One of its subsidiaries, Hutchison Ports, has been involved in the Panama Canal since 1997. But since the turnover of Hong Kong, Mr. Li has sold much of his real estate holdings in Zhōngguó and pivoted some of his investments to Europe, a move that has angered nationalists in Zhōngguó.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 February 2025

• The president of Chile orders curfews as part of state of emergency decree in two regions hit by wildfires, Nuble and Maule
  - Associated Press, 08 February 2025

• Starbucks invests $11 million in Costa Rica to open new coffee shops
  - Tico Times, 08 February 2025

• Las cuentas del Gobierno: proyecciones del precio del dálar (el dólar cerraría en promedio este 2025 en $4.360), inflación (3,6%) y PIB/GDP (crecerá un 2,6%) en 2025
  - Portafolio, 08 February 2025

• Déficit fiscal por Colombia en 2024 fue al más alto en 20 años. En la presentación del Plan Financiero 2025, el MinHacienda informó que el déficit de 2024 fue de 6,8% del PIB (GDP). Hay dudas sobre el complimiento de la regla fiscal. El déficit que tuvo la Nación fue de $115 billiones en 2024.
  - El Colombiano, 08 February 2025

• Gobierno hace cuentas para 2025 con el dálar promedio en $4.360. También proyecta qye la inflación en 2025 culminará en 3.6%.
  - La Republica, 07 February 2025

• Selling Citgo, the oil company owned by Venezuela, is proving a tough purchase for bidders. The coming auction for Citgo Petroleum could leave its buyer on the hook to other creditors of Venezuela, a stumbling block for the court-ordered sale.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 February 2025

• The president of Panama tells Trump to stop his "lies and falsehoods" about the Panama Canal
  - Thomson's Reuters, 06 February 2025

• Panama denies that the Trump's administration lie/claim that USA government vessels can now transit the Panama Canal for free
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 06 February 2025

• The Trump's administration lies by saying that USA government ships will get free passage through the Panama Canal
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 06 February 2025

• Shares of Embraer jump 105, the highest in 20 years, after it signed ts largest-ever deal with Flexjet, the second-largest operator of commercial private jets, to supply 182 aircraft with an option for 30 additional units
  - Zero Hedge, 05 February 2025

• The leader of Argentina, Javier Milei, announces that following in the footsteps of Trump, Argentina will withdraw from the World Health Organization
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 05 February 2025

• Despite it being cruel and unconstitutional, Trump says he would jail American citizens in El Salvador "in a heartbeat"
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 February 2025

• The CIA is about to get a Trump makeover. The agency offered buyouts to its entire workforce in what officials said is a bid to bring it in line with Trump's priorities, including targeting drug cartels.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 February 2025

• Índice Big Mac del 'Economist': ¿cuánto está depreciado el peso colombiano frente al dólar?
  - Portafolio, 04 February 2025

• The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, ordered the state-run oil company Ecopetrol to cancel a joint venture with a USA-owned company, Occidental Petroleum, that was expected to produce around 90,000 barrels of oil per day. The joint venture was drilling in the Permian basin in the USA.
  - Associated Press, 04 February 2025

• The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals" and accept deportees of any nationality ... "for a fee", housing all of these people in a megaprison known for hosting gang members. Unfortunately, as much as Trump would like this idea, it is unconstitutional. "I do not care what Bukele says, the USA cannot legally banish Americans - such authorities died centuries ago." Immigrant groups criticized the lack of humanity : LULAC "opposes treating deported non-criminal migrants like cattle who can be shuttled from one country to another without regard to their home of origin" (LULAC is the Legaue of United Latin American Citizens).
  - Zero Hedge, 04 February 2025

• Trump lies when he states that the Panama Canal authority is overcharging for tolls through the Canal. Recent increases are attributed in part to drought, maintenance investments and demand.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 February 2025

• Increased volatility of the Colombian peso is expected due to geo-economic uncertainty. Oil prices, the imposition of taxes/tariffs by the USA, speculation and interest rates will determine the behavior of the exchange rate of the peso against the dollar. --- Se espera mayor volatilidad del dólar por incertidumbre geoeconómica. El precio del petróleo, la imposición de aranceles de EE.UU., la especulación y las tasas de interés marcarán el comportamiento de la tasa de cambio entre el peso y el dólar.
  - El Nuevo Siglo, 03 February 2025

• Venezuela's government bonds rise above 20 cents to the dollar (for 2027 bonds), up 3.5 cents since Trump took office, after Venezuela agreed to release six imprisoned US citizens and to accept the return of undocumented immigrants sent by the Trump administration
  - Bloomberg, 03 February 2025

• Trump reiterated his vow to "take back" the Panama Canal, an illegal seizure of another country's property, in an escalating diplomatic dispute with Panama over the presence of companies from Zhōngguó at the ports of the Canal.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 03 February 2025

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a strong supporter of Trump, calls the 'status quo' at the Panama Canal unacceptable, as Trump renews vows to seize it
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 03 February 2025

• After threats by Trump to illegally seize the Panama Canal, Panama agrees to leave the Belt-and-Road initiative of Zhōngguó
  - Jiaravanon's Fortune, 02 February 2025

• El Salvador abandons the use of bitcoin as a legal tender after its experiment failed. Bitcoin was never used by most Salvadorans, its modern city was never built, and now it will cease to be legal tender in El Salvador, a complete failed economic bet by President Nayib Bukele.
  - Tico Times, 02 February 2025

• The Colombian peso gains against the dollar, despite high uncertainty and an increasing trade deficit, which rose to $1.75 billion in November 2024.
  - London Loves Business, 31 January 2025

• Colombia unexpectedly halted a series of interest rate cuts that began in 2023 as policymakers fret about the worsening fiscal outlook, a large minimum wage hike and tax/tariff threats from Trump. The central bank kept its benchmark interest rate steady at 9.5%. The move suspends a 13-month phase of monetary easing during which the bank lowered borrowing costs by 3.75 percentage points. The decision is a blow for President Gustavo Petro, who has called for faster easing to revive sluggish economic growth.
  - Bloomberg, 31 January 2025

• Techo del dólar en Colombia llegaría hasta los $4.700 en 2025
  - Portafolio, 30 January 2025

• The president of Panama says that there will be no negotiation about ownership of the Panama Canal - that Trump cannot seize it like a dictator
  - Associated Press, 30 January 2025

• The Casarabe culture of the Lllanos de Moxos in Bolivia developed a sophisticated agricultural engineering system that allowed them to produce maize throughout the year. For almost 1000 years, they designed and implemented an innovative landscape engineering system, including the construction of extensive drainage canals and farm ponds. This advancement allowed the transformation of flooded tropical savannahs into highly productive fields. Most of the Casarabe culture was destroyed by Christian missionairies and Christian conquistadors in the 1500s.
  - Universitat Autonoma de Barcelone, 29 January 2025

• The administration of Trump orders that people from Colombia landing in Miami to visit the USA (or pass through to other, less racist, countries) must pass through 4 layers of security checking. Americans entering Colombia at the Bogota airport have the following security check: "Anything to declare? No? Welcome to Colombia."
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 29 January 2025

• The climate crisis and global heating put the food supply of Central America at risk due to extreme weather events such as droughts, heat waves and intense storms, which reduce agricultural productivity, disrupt supply chains, and increase food prices
  - Tico Times, 29 January 2025

• By bullying Colombia with threats of taxes/tariffs, Trump threatened a vibrant alternative for manufacturers in the USA that isn't Zhōngguó
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 January 2025

• Trump is not going to like the political fallout from his bullying of Colombia. He is forcing Latin Americans to unite against his threatened taxes/tariffs. If Latin America became upset enough with Trump's antics, the region could decided to look towards other trading partners, which would greatly hurt the economy of the USA. Latin America as a whole is the "world's largest leading net food exporter". With this ramping up of regional alliances and international solidarity efforts, the region is already hinting that, indeed, it has a decent bit of economic leverage as a collective and will hardly rule it out if the Trump -- who has referred to Latin American immigrants as "poisoning the blood" of the USA -- continues to treat immigrants as less than human.
  - Slate, 28 January 2025

• Authorities wage war against a child sex cult plaguing Central America that is controlled by Lev Tahor, a fanatical anti-Zionist Hasidic Jewish cult
  - Zero Hedge, 28 January 2025

• Arabica coffee prices hit new high on a brief political squabble between Colombia and the USA. Arabica coffee prices hit a record level, as traders digested the withdrawal of Trump's threats to impose tariffs and economic sanctions on Colombia.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 28 January 2025

• The Colombia peso declines against the dollar, and investors are jittery, after Trump temporarily scares Colombia with taxes/tariffs
  - Thomson's Reuters, 27 January 2025

• CBD, a potentially useful medical compound, is found in a non-marijuana plant. CBD has been found in the fruits and flowers of a plant known as Trema micrantha blume, a shrub which grows across much of the South American country and is often considered a weed.
  - Science Alert, 26 January 2025

• Honduras says that Trump's deportation plan could push it to have closer relations with Zhōngguó
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 26 January 2025

• The 'Shark' truck manufactured by BYD in Zhōngguó is generating worries in the global truck market. BYD has not announced plans to sell the Shark in the USA, but it has entered countries where GM, Ford and Toyota have sold pickup trucks globally, including Australia, Brazil and Mexico. There is a fear among global automakers that rivals in Zhōngguó could flood their markets, undercutting domestic production and vehicle prices to the detriment of their own auto industries.
  - CBNC, 25 January 2025

• Chile accuses top official in Venezuela of ordering the assassination of a dissident. Venezuela Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, an ally of strongman Nicolás Maduro, is accused of ordering the assassination in Santiago, Chile, allegedly carried out by transnational crime gang Tren de Aragua.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 January 2025

• Trump wants to stop buying oil from Venezuela. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Venezuela is "governed by a narco-trafficking organization".
  - Zero Hedge, 22 January 2025

• The Trump administration shuts down the White House' Spanish-language web page and social media. Trump removed the Spanish version of the page in 2017. At that time, White House officials said they would reinstate it. President Joe Biden reinstated the page in 2021.
  - Associated Press, 22 January 2025

• Zhōngguó is shipping three large megacranes to the port of Turbo on the Carribean coast of Colombia
  - El Colombiano, 22 January 2025

• An audit of Hong Kong's Hutchison by the government of Panama, aims to counter the US narrative on the Panama Canal. "The [government of Panama] needs concrete data to counter that Zhōngguó is controlling the Panama Canal."
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 22 January 2025

• How Guatemala plans to resettle planeloads of deportees from the USA. The case of Guatemala reveals how Trump's promised sweeps could change life outside the United States, too.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 January 2025

• Panama submitted a formal letter to UN Secretary General António Guterres and the UN Security Council on Monday, rejecting comments that Trump made about reclaiming the Panama Canal during his inauguration speech.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 January 2025

• The vast Cobre mine owned by First Quantum Minerals was shut down more than a year ago, but Indigenous people report restrictions on movement and unexplained illness and death. The company's private security guards, not the national police, patrol the concession. Local residents, mostly subsistence farmers of modest means, say that First Quantum operates as a state within a state. In November 2023, the supreme court of Panama unanimously ruled that the the company's contract with the government was unconstitutional. Local people question the legal basis for the company to continue to exercise control over their lives.
  - The Guardian, 21 January 2025

• Trump's aspirations to seize control of the Panama Canal are an idiotic 'canal to nowhere'
  - War on the Rocks, 21 January 2025

• Trump's authoritarian aspirations to seize control of the Panama Canal could have a serious economic and political cost
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 21 January 2025

• Rossiya, somewhat hypocritical (think seizing the Crimea from Ukraine) warns Trump against seizing the Panama Canal
  - Nextstar Media's The Hill, 21 January 2025

• Trump comments that Spain is a member of BRICS, mentally confusing the 'S' in BRICS to mean Spain, not the reality that 'S' represents South Africa. If Biden said something so mentally confused, Fox News would have a day of insults for Biden.
  - The New Republic, 21 January 2025

• Trump is quite clear: "We don't need Latin America". Those comments seem poised to deflate hopes of some in Latin America that Trump would refocus resources on shoring up ties with countries in the Americas. Yet Trump and others whine about the presence of the strategic investments of Zhōngguó in Latin America. Zhōngguó has increased its footholds in the region over the past decade, financing major infrastructure projects including deep water ports in Peru.
  - Axel Springer's Politico, 1 January 2025

• In wanting to seize the Panama Canal and all of Greenland, Trump dreams of a new, darker, authoritarian, American empire
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 January 2025

• Pope Francis has dissolved a Catholic Christian religious community with members across South America and the United States, following years of investigations into alleged sexual and psychological abuse by the group's Christian founder and others. The Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, based in Peru and once numbering some 20,000 Christian members, confirmed its dissolution in a statement on Monday, without offering an explanation. A report published in 2017 concluded that the Catholic Christian founder and other high-ranking former Christian members had sexually abused at least 19 children and 10 adults.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 20 January 2025

• Pope Francis has dissolved a Catholic Christian religious community after an investigation found "sadistic" abuses by members of the Catholic Christian community.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 20 January 2025

• Trump stokes fears about the influence of Zhōngguó in Panama, and Trump wants to illegally sieze the Canal from Panama, but he forgets that thousands of people from Zhōngguó gave their lives to build the Panama Canal and Railway from the 1850 for the following 50 years.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 20 January 2025

• Ricardo Martinelli, a former president of Panama, who has sought asylum in the embassy of Nicaragua, and about twenty others will be tried starting Monday in Panama for alleged money laundering of bribes from the construction company Odebrecht based in Brazil.
  - Tico Times, 20 January 2025

• The coffee industry in Costa Rica is experiencing a crisis due to labor shortages, causing a major loss of the current coffee bean harvest. The losses are due to strict new immigration laws in Nicaragua which have made it difficult for many people from Nicaragua to come to work in Costa Rica. The losses are also due to unseasonable rains that disrupted the crucial harvest season.
  - Tico Times, 19 January 2025

• Relations between Costa Rica and Zhōngguó have grown increasingly strained after the Costa Rica's decision to exclude companies Asia from its 5G network development, a move that has prompted sharp criticism from Chinese officials in Zhōngguó
  - Tico Times, 19 January 2025

• Assassination of an female escort leads to a miniskirt ban in the world's least popular, highly corrupt, parliament, that of Peru. By the time the escort, Andrea Vidal Gomez, succumbed to her injuries in intensive care after being shot with multiple bullets, investigators had begun to unearth a scandal shocking even by the rock-bottom standards of the Peru's ethically-challenged Congress -- a prostitution ring allegedly operating within the legislative palace itself.
  - Barclay's The Telegraph, 19 January 2025

• The Trump administration rebuffs talks on mass deportations, according to countries in Latin America
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 January 2025

• Trump's illegal threats to seize the Panama Canal leave the leaders of Panama uncertain as to how to respond
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 17 January 2025

• The number of countries members, or wanting to be members, of the BRICS economic bloc is growing, and threats of new taxes/tariffs by Trump doesn't scare aspiring countries
  - Comcast's CNBC, 17 January 2025

• Panama wants to preserve an alliance with the USA, but Trump's threats could push Panama closer to Zhōngguó
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 January 2025

• Colombian peso strengthens after relief from US inflation data - El peso colombiano se fortalece tras el alivio por los datos de la inflación en EE.UU.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 15 January 2025

• The Colombian peso is showing notable resilience at the start of this week, limiting the downward pressures affecting other currencies in Latin America. This performance is due to a combination of internal and external factors, including the rise in oil prices and domestic economic data that provide some hope, although significant challenges remain.
  - London Loves Business, 14 January 2025

• Tether is moving its operations from the British Virgin Islands to El Salvador after being granted a digital asset service provider license.
  - Zero Hedge, 14 January 2025

• Mass public protests challenge the anti-gang policy and prison system, and the mining policies, of the government of El Salvador
  - Tico Times, 13 January 2025

• Zhōngguó aims to deepen ties with countries in the Caribbean, as Grenada affirms the principle that Tawian is part of Zhōngguó
  - Thomson's Reuters, 13 January 2025

• Emerging market currencies are at the mercy of central banks as fiscal policy lags. The dollar's surge due to a resilient US economy and expectations of fewer interest-rate cuts from the Federal Reserve have put central banks around the world on guard to defend their currencies and avert capital outflows. However, emerging market governments are constrained from deploying more fiscal firepower to bolster growth due to their elevated debt levels following the Covid pandemic.
  - Bloomberg, 12 January 2025

• Venezuela's Maduro is sworn in for a third term as president that he stole, and he has never had less legitimacy. The authoritarian Maduro's regime faces a growing problem: almost no one outside Venezuela, and fewer people in the country, see him as a legitimate leader.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 January 2025

• Regulated taxis in Costa Rica will all be out of business by 2030, because taxi cab drivers cannot compete with Uber and DiDi drivers who don't have to pay insurance, don't have as many car inspections and other economic factors as Uber and Didi continue to fight being regulated - to level the playing field
  - Q Costa Rica, 10 January 2025

• "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's canal or glaciers": Trump is not ruling out using military force to reclaim the Panama Canal (which is a violation of international laws) or to seize Greenland (which is a violation of international laws)
  - Zero Hedge, 07 January 2025

• "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's canal or glaciers": Trump is not ruling out using military force to reclaim the Panama Canal (which is a violation of international laws) or to seize Greenland (which is a violation of international laws)
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 January 2025

• The Panama Canal's newest voyagers: fish crisscrossing between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. A multibillion dollar expansion helped the Panama Canal accomodate extremely large cargo ships. It might also be fueling economic disaster. In less than a decade, fish from both oceans - snooks, jacks, snappers and more - have almost entirely displaced the freshwater species that were in the canal system before, scientists with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama have found. Fishermen around Lake Gatún who rely on those species, chiefly peacock bass and tilapia, say their catches are growing scarce. Researchers now worry that more fish could start making their way through from one ocean to the other. And no potential invader causes more concern than the venomous, candy-striped lionfish. They are known to inhabit the Caribbean coast of Panama, but not the eastern Pacific. If they made it there through the canal, they could ravage the defenseless local fish, just as they have done in the Gulf of México and the Caribbean.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 January 2025

• In a significant boost to Haiti's efforts to combat escalating gang violence, approximately 150 military police officers from Central America (including 75 from Guatemala) have been deployed to aid the beleaguered Caribbean nation. They join other soldiers there, including a similarly sized contingent from El Salvador.
  - Zero Hedge, 06 January 2025

• A crack appears in the dictatorship of Cuba. A regime leak to the Miami Herald reveals that the Havana elite is hoarding billions.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 06 January 2025

• Global mining's dangerous new reality: guns, hostages, arrests. Mineral and metal mines in the developing world are caught up in tensions over profits, and host countries are increasingly using force to get a bigger share of the profits.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 06 January 2025

• President Xiomara Castro of Honduras has threatened to evict USA military forces from a major base if Trump follows through on his promise to unleash a mass-deportation policy targeting illegal immigrants. An estimated five percent of the Honduras population lives in America. Like other Latin American countries, Honduras has a huge financial interest in keeping its huge population of illegal emigrants inside the USA -- the money they send back to families inside Honduras accounts for up to 25% of the economy of the economy.
  - Zero Hedge, 04 January 2025

• President Xiomara Castro of Honduras has threatened to evict USA military forces from a major base if Trump follows through on his promise to unleash a mass-deportation policy targeting illegal immigrants. An estimated five percent of the Honduras population lives in America. Like other Latin American countries, Honduras has a huge financial interest in keeping its huge population of illegal emigrants inside the USA -- the money they send back to families inside Honduras accounts for up to 25% of the economy of the economy.
  - Tico Times, 04 January 2025

• The Panama Canal treaties negotiated by President Carter symbolize how much the Washington of Christian politicians has changed for the worse. To return the canal to Panama, President Jimmy Carter worked to change minds and build a bipartisan coalition that put aside short-term political considerations. Christian politicians in Washington no longer care to cooperate.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 January 2025

• Mercado Libre - the digital backbond of Latin America. The logistics of Amazon, the marketplace of Alibaba, and the fintech capabilities of Block, all rolled into one company in a region experiencing rapid structural growth.
  - Quartr, 03 January 2025

• Trump and his Panama Canal tantrum, as Trump wants to punish Panama for failing to appreciate the "extraordinary generosity" of the USA with regards to the Canal. What "generosity" the Panamanians remember is: the military of the Christian USA killing several thousand civilians in the El Chorrillo negighborhood of Panama City (practice for the upcoming USA war in Iraq?) as part of an operation to remove President Manuel Noriega (who previously had been on the payroll of the CIA), his removal paving the way for far greater involvement in the international drug trade by the ruling class of Panama. Prior to the USA returning the Canal to Panama (under President Carter), the USA enforced a a system of racial segregation from 1903 to 1979 that persisted even after such things were officially abolished in the US proper.
  - Al Jazeera, 02 January 2025

• Trinidad and Tobago declares a state of emergency over rising crime. To curb gang killings and a rise in homicides, the measure empowers the military to make arrests and allows the authorities to enter the homes of suspects without warrants and deny them bail. Experts estimate that there are 186 gangs with more than 1,750 members in Trinidad and Tobago. Countries like Trinidad and Tobago have also seen serious spikes in crime because of their position between cocaine-producing countries in South America and the major consumer country up north, the United States.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 January 2025

• The true threat to USA commerce involving the Panama Canal is not Zhōngguó - Trump's false claim, but global heating, which is reducing the sources of water that power the Panama Canal. Yet Trump hates anything to do that helps solve the problem of global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 January 2025

• The Sinaloa drug cartel, based in Mexico, has chosen South Africa as a major operational base, they said, largely because of its strong trade links to Zhōngguó, which produces the chemicals used to make the synthetic opioid. In July, top police in South Africa raided what they later described as a "drug superlab" in the northern province of Limpopo in South Africa, seizing large quantities of methamphetamine, a small quantity of fentanyl, and about 500 pounds of chemicals used to manufacture both drugs. South Africa is an ideal place for drug trafickers because of the high level of offical corruption, good trade logicstics with Zhōngguó and Latin America, and a flawed international banking sector.
  - Zero Hedge, 01 January 2025

• Trump wants to illegally seize Greenland from Denmark, and illegally seize the Panama Canal from Panama. Global heating is making both places more important to global shipping and trade.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 January 2025

• $10,000,000 - The Supreme Court of Venezuela has fined TikTok $10 million, accusing it of failing to control the spread of viral challenges that have allegedly led to the deaths of three children
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 31 December 2024

• In Ecuador, the rivers run dry and the lights go out: a warming nation's doom loop due to global heating. An extraordinary drought has drained the rivers and reservoirs of Ecuador, leading to power outages of up to 14 hours. Some fear this is the beginning of a larger global crisis.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 December 2024

• An Argentine judge has ordered the international capture of the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, and his wife Rosario Murillo for the "systematic violation of human rights". The government of Ortega and his wife "is perhaps the bloodiest dictatorship that has existed on the continent", according to one of the lawyers filing the complaint. The crimes they are accused of include "murder, serious deprivation of liberty, forced disappearance of people, torture, deportation or forced transfer of population and persecution of a group or community".
  - Tico Times, 30 December 2024

• A private, illegal, coup: Guatemala, 1954. A 1954 coup, backed by the CIA and private citizen William Pawley, installed an authoritarian regime and touched off four decades of civil war in Guatemala.
  - JSTOR Daily, 29 December 2024

• Airplane flights are grounded as potholes plague the runways at the Liberia airport in Costa Rica
  - Tico Times, 28 December 2024

• The communist government of Cuba is so incompetent that the country now has to import sugar ... at $25 per pound. "This like Libya running out of sand".
  - Zero Hedge, 27 December 2024

• Santander to sell its stake in Credit Agricole's Caceis back to the bank based in France. The long-term partnership between Caceis and Santander will be maintained but the Latin American joint venture is not part of the transaction and will remain controlled by both entities.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 December 2024

• Prosus to buy Latin American online travel agency Despegar for $1.7 billion. The investment group, which is Despegar's largest shareholder, aims to serve 100 million customers across local e-commerce, travel and fintech sectors following the acquisition.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 December 2024

• The Paraguay River is a 2,100-mile (3,400-kilometer) waterway that carries much of the agricultural and mineral wealth of South America to the Atlantic. The riverine waterway connects Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay and carries much of the world's soybeans, ore and minerals. But the waterway also carries violence and drug trafficking. And the drug cartels, among them, the First Capital Command of Brazil, have found devious and complex ways to use the waterway to ship cocaine as far away as Belgium and Holland. In the last two years, more than 50 tons of cocaine that traveled this route through South America were seized from the European ports of Antwerp, Belgium and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Much of it was controlled by the First Capital Command.
  - Associated Press, 26 December 2024

• Trump picks Kevin Marino Cabrera, a District commissioner in Miami-Dade county, as his ambassador to Panama. Cabrera is a former lobbyist and political operative in Florida.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 26 December 2024

• Colombia is defending its sovereignty from the power of global corporations who abuse the law through investor-state dispute settlements
  - Al Jazeera, 25 December 2024

• The blockbuster trade deal between the European Union and Mercosur (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and, newly, Bolivia) is deeply controversial. The trans-Atlantic partnership is estimated to cover an area of more than 700 million people and represents about 20% of global gross domestic product. Analysts expect a bumpy ratification process, with farmers and some EU member states warning it could create unfair competition for European agriculture.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 23 December 2024

• Trump's threat to seize the Panama Canal from Panama pushed down Panamanian government bond prices by about $0.01
  - Bloomberg, 22 December 2024

• Trump threatens to reassert USA control over the Panama Canal (to do so would violates international law), accusing Panama of charging excessive rates to use the Central American passage, which allows ships to cross between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Trump's threats were an exceedingly rare example of a leader of the USA saying he could push a sovereign country to hand over territory.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 22 December 2024

• Malaria is still endemic in 83 countries
  - Zero Hedge, 22 December 2024

• Authorities in Guatemala rescued 160 children this Friday from a property belonging to the Lev Tahor sect, an ultra-orthodox Jewish group under investigation for alleged sexual abuse of minors. Prosecutors stated in a press conference that the raid was conducted due to "suspicion" of human trafficking crimes "in the form of forced pregnancy, abuse against minors, and rape".
  - Tico Times, 20 December 2024

• El Salvador will privatize or close the cryptocurrency wallet "Chivo" created by President Nayib Bukele when he made bitcoin legal tender in 2021, an official said Thursday. The announcement came after the government of El Salvador reached a $1.4 billion loan deal with the International Monetary Fund that addressed its controversial embrace of bitcoin. Under the IMF agreement, bitcoin use by the private sector will no longer be mandatory.
  - Tico Times, 20 December 2024

• El Salvador will privatize or close the cryptocurrency wallet "Chivo" created by President Nayib Bukele when he made bitcoin legal tender in 2021, an official said Thursday. The announcement came after the government of El Salvador reached a $1.4 billion loan deal with the International Monetary Fund that addressed its controversial embrace of bitcoin. Under the IMF agreement, bitcoin use by the private sector will no longer be mandatory.
  - BBC, 20 December 2024

• How rolling electric power blackouts have transformed life in Ecuador. Since September 23, government-controlled blackouts have plunged the South American country of 18 million into darkness almost daily. Some outages can last up to 14 hours per day. The cuts aim to prevent the collapse of the electrical grid, as a months-long drought dries up the rivers that power hydroelectric dams.
  - Al Jazeera, 19 December 2024

• The Colombian peso is under pressure and unable to sustain recent gains
  - London Loves Business, 17 December 2024

• As Trump threatens mass deportations of immigrants from Latin America (many fleeing their countries because of unfair free trade policies that favor the USA, and from the violence caused by Americans addictions to all sorts of drugs), countries in Central America struggle to prepare for an influx of vulnerable immigrants
  - Associated Press, 16 December 2024

• Weeks of upheaval have paralyzed Bolivia. Protests in Bolivia triggered by a feud between the president and a political rival have caused turmoil. One fallout: fuel shortages that have left drivers lining up for gas for days.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 December 2024

• Exporting agricultural products from tropical regions to Zhōngguó, the USA, the Middle East, and Europe is three times more harmful to biodiversity than previously assumed. International trade has caused more than 90% of the loss that occurred between 1995 and 2022 due to the conversion of natural areas into agricultural land.
  - Phys.org, 13 December 2024

• People in Cuba who are still reeling from months of hours-long blackouts now have a new problem on their hands: fuel shortages. Many gasoline stations across the island have been shuttered for days as an unusually severe shortfall has left the nation nearly devoid of gasoline and diesel, stranding motorists and sprouting seemingly interminable lines at the pump in Havana.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 13 December 2024

• The telecom industry in Costa Rica is rocked by allegations of corruption committed by Huawei. The Costa Rican government announced it has filed a complaint against Huawei and its representative in the country, Yang Peng, along with two officials and three former officials of the Costa Rican Electricity Institute. They clarified that the issue involves contracts awarded to Huawei for deploying 3G and 5G internet technology in Costa Rica.
  - Tico Times, 12 December 2024

• Desperate people from Haiti who fled to the Dominican Republic are being sent back in cages. Relations between the neighboring countries on the island of Hispaniola have long been frosty. They are now complicated by up to 10,000 deportations a week.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 December 2024

• Ecopetrol confirms the discovery of the largest find of natural gas in the history of Colombia
  - Rigzone, 09 December 2024

• Oil output in Argentina is predicted to surpass that of Colombia, making Argentina the third largest oil producer in South America after Brazil and Venezuela. In Colombia, natural gas reserves are half of what they were a decade ago and crude reserves have stagnated as President Gustavo Petro shunned oil exploration in favor of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
  - Bloomberg, 09 December 2024

• "There will be nothing left": researchers fear the collapse of science in Argentina. One year into President Javier Milei's presidency, scientists are exiting the country in the face of idiotically big budget cuts.
  - Nature, 09 December 2024

• Europe's new trade pact with South America, its largest deal to date, could be a sign of how countries will diversify trade relationships as Trump threatends taxes/tariffs, alliances that weaken a bit the USA economically
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 December 2024

• As Trump threatens taxes/tariffs, Europe and South America strengthen economic ties. The European Union and South American countries (belonging to Mercosur, which includes Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) have reached an agreement to establish one of the largest trade zones in the world.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 December 2024

• As Trump threatens taxes/tariffs, Europe and South America strengthen economic ties. The European Union and South American countries (belonging to Mercosur, which includes Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) have reached an agreement to establish one of the largest trade zones in the world.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 December 2024

• Half a dozen Latin American countries have asked the United States for help in "resisting economic coercion" from Zhōngguó
  - TicoTimes, 05 December 2024

• A silent crisis is unfolding on the coastlines of Costa Rica, threatening the natural wealth that defines the nation as an ecological paradise. The massive extraction of seashells, fueled by local and international tourism, is wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems and worsening beach erosion. This often-overlooked practice disrupts the delicate balance of beaches, critical habitats for species that support biodiversity and sustainable tourism.
  - Tico Times, 05 December 2024

• The deluge of inexpensive items washing over the developing world is increasing tensions between Zhōngguó and the Global South, complicating Zhōngguó's plans to build alliances as it confronts trade tensions with the USA.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 04 December 2024

• The World Bank on Tuesday said developing countries spent a record $1.4 trillion to service their foreign debts in 2023 as interest costs climbed to a 20-year high, squeezing budgets for necessities including healthcare, education and the environment.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 03 December 2024

• The World Bank on Tuesday said developing countries spent a record $1.4 trillion to service their foreign debts in 2023 as interest costs climbed to a 20-year high, squeezing budgets for necessities including healthcare, education and the environment.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 December 2024

• Panama delists 6 Panamanian-flagged ships over sanctions imposed by the UK on Rossiya
  - Zero Hedge, 03 December 2024

• How Suriname and Guyana plan to share oil and gas wealth with citizens. Suriname will distribute revenues from new oil and gas discoveries among its more than 600,000 citizens - "Royalties for Everyone".
  - Al Jazeera, 30 November 2024

• More oil for fewer migrants: Trump is urged to make a deal with the dictatorship in Venezuela. Lobbying efforts push for negotiations with the dictator, Nicolas Maduro, instead of seeking regime change.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 29 November 2024

• A month-long fuel shortage in Bolivia is happening at the same time as the country's foreign currency reserves plummet, leaving Bolivians unable to find U.S. dollars at banks and exchange houses. Imported goods that were once commonplace have become scarce. The fuel crisis has created a sense that the country is coming undone, disrupting economic activity and everyday life for millions of people, hurting commerce and farm production and sending food prices soaring.
  - Associated Press, 28 November 2024

• Six 'narco submarines' travelling from Colombia to Australia are seized in a massive international operation that netter 225 metric tons of cocaine, the rest being marijuana.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 28 November 2024

• The Supreme Court of Costa Rica rules that recreational marijuana is unconstitutional because it requires Costa Rica to ignore international drug treaties that it has signed, the Supreme Court unethically refusing to recognize that many other countries such as the USA and Canada that have signed these treaties ... ignore these treaties
  - Q Costa Rica, 28 November 2024

• Colombia reduces its 2024 budget by 5.6% amid growing fiscal concerns, in an effort to comply with spending limits amid lower-than-expected tax revenue.
  - Bloomberg, 27 November 2024

• How cruise ship companies - Royal Caribbean, Disney, Carnival - are destroying the environment of the Bahamas. Another vast tourist resort project promising jobs and prosperity. But critics say such developments imperil the pristine environments they advertise, and don't deliver real economic benefits for the locals.
  - The Guardian, 27 November 2024

• Zhōngguó extends reach into Latin America as exports of cranes, and trade diversification, increase. Zhōngguó is expanding its maritime footprint in Latin America, with more exports of cranes amid rising tensions with the USA.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 27 November 2024

• ARGT, an ETF concentrating on stocks in Argentina, sees record inflows as traders support the efforts of President Milei to improve the economy
  - Bloomberg, 25 November 2024

• A warload in Haiti, Jimmy "Barbacue" Cherizier, suffers a major defect. After announcing a target - hotels - for his brutal foot soldiers in Petionville, an affluent suburb in Port-au-Prince, two two trucks carrying dozens of his heavily-armed men drove into Petionville. However, neighborhood vigilantes and police used the warning to ambush the foot soldiers of Cherizier's gang, and killed over two dozen of them.
  - Barclay's The Telegraph, 24 November 2024

• The latest G20 meeting in Rio was all about the power of the Global South, with poverty eradication and genuine economic progress trumping the old G7 agendas of war, profit, and arm-twisting.
  - Zero Hedge, 24 November 2024

• The junk-bond rally in emerging markets risks being just an interlude between the debt crisis of the past four years and a new bout of distress in the next four, if Donald Trump does what he says he will. The world's poorest nations - which form the bulk of the EM junk-bond universe - stand to lose the most from his pledges to raise trade tariffs, boost government spending and deport foreigners without visas.
  - Bloomberg, 24 November 2024

• Shade grown coffee thrives in the low altitude regions of Costa Rica
  - Tico Times, 24 November 2024

• A massive corruption case involving bribes from the Odebrecht conglomerate, that spilled across Latin America, is coming undone as some judges reverse convictions under suspect reasoning. Operation Car Wash, which started in Brazil, revealed a bribery scheme that spanned at least 12 countries. The Supreme Court of Brazil has reversed much of its impact.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 24 November 2024

• The new port in Chancay, Peru, north of Lima, 60% of the port being owned by COSCO, the shipping giant based in Zhōngguó, is part of Zhōngguó's strategy to outcompete the USA by establishing a maritime and land corridor linking Zhōngguó to Latin America. In the Western Hemisphere, companies owned by the government of Zhōngguó have financed, built, or now operate several key ports along strategic waterways, including the Panama Canal and the Caribbean Sea.
  - Zero Hedge, 23 November 2024

• Afraid of losing its trade pact with the USA and Canada, Mexico alters its laws and removes Chinese parts from Zhōngguó, launching a campaign to get companies to replace parts from Zhōngguó with parts made in Mexico.
  - Associated Press, 23 November 2024

• According to the Global Climate Action Survey 2024, conducted by Gensler, Costa Rica is among the countries most severely impacted by extreme weather events attributed to climate change.
  - TicoTimes, 22 November 2024

• As opposed to the USA, Spain plans to grant residency to nearly one million undocumented immigrants. he government said new rules could give legal status - and work permits - to about 300,000 people a year over the next three years to address gaps in the labor market. Spain needs about 250,000 foreign workers a year to maintain its welfare state, given its demographic challenges including one of the lowest birthrates in Europe. Most of undocumented migrants in Spain are women from South America.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 November 2024

• As global heating causes the glaciers of South America to melt more quickly, the supply of freshwater is dwindling and its quality is getting worse. For thousands of years, the glaciers were replenished with ice in the winter. But they have shrunk by more than 40 percent since 1968, uncovering rocks that, when exposed to the elements, can trigger chemical reactions that leach toxic metals into the water and turn it acidic.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 November 2024

• Haiti has many problems and very few solutions. A search for a solution to the crisis in Haiti is growing more urgent as gangs gain territory and thousands more flee their homes.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 November 2024

• Nearly six months after hundreds of Kenyan police officers arrived in Haiti on a U.S.-sponsored mission to restore order, the crisis has suddenly worsened.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 November 2024

• The Congress of Colombia passes a law to ban child marriages, raising the mininum age for marriage to 18, and seeks to protect the rights and development opportunities for minors
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 14 November 2024

• Stocks of companies in Zhōngguó, Asia, Africa and Latin America are hurt by a negative macroeconomic backdrop due to expected new taxes/tariff's under Trump that could push up the USA dollar even more
  - Zero Hedge, 14 November 2024

• In 2000, the largest extraregional trading partner of South America was the USA. By 2023, Zhōngguó was the largest trading partner for countries in South America, all because of the indifference of the USA to compete.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 14 November 2024

• A drug gang stole 3 tons of gold in a scam so perfect it is still going. Miners are plundering one of the biggest mother lodes of gold in Colombia, led by gunmen who seized tunnels from a Chinese mining giant.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 14 November 2024

• Peso colombiano cayó por preocupaciones de presupuesto, y oscilaciones del petróleo
  - La Republica, 13 November 2024

• The Colombian peso declines on national budget concerns and swings in oil prices. The peso fell as much as 2% on Wednesday to an 18-month low.
  - Bloomberg, 13 November 2024

• Ecopetrol, the state-owned oil company in Colombia, reports that its 3rd quarter profits declined 28%
  - Thomson's Reuters, 13 November 2024

• The online, e-commerce, retail giants of Zhōngguó are transforming the shopping habits of consumers in Latin America. Local stores and shopping malls are suffering as multibillion companies such as Shein, Temu and AliExpress flood countries in Latin America with cheap, quickly delivered goods. Countries in Latin America, to protect their economies, to keep riches in Latin America, are raising import taxes.
  - Tico Times, 13 November 2024

• The Panama Canal says shipping rebound is underway after record drought. After record drought and worldwide trade issues, a new vessel booking system shows more cargo volumes ahead of Lunar New Year and decisions on a major dam project are coming.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 12 November 2024

• The constitutional court of Bolivia has prevented former two-term President Evo Morales from running for the presidency again, ruling that the Constitution limits people to being president twice, as has Morales.
  - Al Jazeera, 09 November 2024

• MercadoLibre shares sink as lending provisions erode profits. The e-commerce and financial technology giant grew its overall credit book by 77% from a year earlier to $6 billion, with the portion tied to credit cards surging 172% over the same period, according to a release. Provisions set aside for all the lending cut into net income, which at $397 million fell short of the $513 million average estimate of analysts polled by Bloomberg.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 07 November 2024

• Exclusive: Locking eyes with mass murderers in the Cecot prison of El Salvador, where the "worst of the worst" are jailed - Mass murderers, drug dealers and gangsters, they are accused of once holding El Salvador hostage, gripping the nation with fear as they ruled cities and streets. Today, they are stripped of freedom, influence, and individuality. And they may never get them back.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 06 November 2024

• The Colombian peso faces volatility as presidential elections in the USA loom over financial markets
  - City Paper Bogota, 05 November 2024

• To a great degree (about 80%), profits from sales of oil in Ecuador end up in Northern Hemisphere companies. While this money is being stolen (like the silver and gold stole in the past by Spain), the Amazon is further damaged and non-white Indigenous communities suffer. he oil companies receive 20%, the refineries and distribution intermediaries 21%, and the Government of Spain 38%, due to the special tax on hydrocarbons because they are not sustainable.
  - Phys.org, 05 November 2024

• Electric vehicle makers based in Zhōngguó are globally expanding into Latin America. Brazil is now the biggest overseas market for BYD as companies from Zhōngguó grab market share in Latin Ameria from Western companies.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 04 November 2024

• Armed group kidnaps more than 200 military personnel and seizes base in Cochabamba, in central Bolivia. The incident is the latest escalation in a period of unrest in the South American country as ex-President Morales and President Arce clash ahead of the 2025 election.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 02 November 2024

• Gentrification by richer foreigners in Costa Rica, and the negative economic impact on residents of Costa Rica. Rents have doubled, and the price of gas and groceries continues to rise with no sign of leveling out. The result is that many locals are having to move because they cannot afford to live in their own neighborhoods anymore.
  - Tico Times, 02 November 2024

• Investors in emerging market bonds hunt for upside, prepare for elections in the USA. Emerging market bonds in local currencies fear Trump taxes/tariffs. Emerging market debt in dollars has very little upside, forcing investors to hunt for bargains in riskier places. The coming elections in the USA add a lot of uncertainty.
  - Barron's, 02 November 2024

• The goal of Zhōngguó to shift its food import sources since 2018 has put it in a better position to impose tit-for-tat tariffs on farm goods from the USA with less harm to its food security if trade friction with Washington flares after the presidential election in the USA. Zhōngguó has decreased purchases from the USA, buying more grain from Brazil, Argentina, Ukraine and Australia, even as it boosts domestic production. This year, the share of Zhōngguó's soybean imports from the USA has dropped to 18%, from 40% in 2016, while Brazil's share has grown to 76% from 46%, according to customs data in Zhōngguó. For corn, Brazil overtook the USA as the top supplier to Zhōngguó in 2023, just one year after Beijing approved purchases from Brazil.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 01 November 2024

• The plans of the Dominican Republic for a wage of refugees from Haiti: deport 10,000 a week. The migrants are sent back home where a gang war awaits. "We are being treated like animals", one person said.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 30 October 2024

• Abortion access is dwindling in Argentina, three years after legalization. Since the start of his administration, the government of Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, halted the purchase of essential supplies for abortion access and has not delivered a single box of misoprostol, mifepristone, or manual vacuum aspiration cannulas, essential elements to guarantee abortion access for pregnant individuals, according to an information request filed by rights group Amnesty International.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 29 October 2024

• Diplomatic sources report that Brazil vetoed the request by authoritarian Venezuela to join the BRICS organization, while Rossiya's authoritarian president Putin, who supports authoritarian Venezuela, acknowledged during a press conference that Rossiya and Brazil disagree on Venezuela.
  - Zero Hedge, 27 October 2024

• A dramatic video shows an assassination attempt on the ex-president of Bolivia, Evo Morales
  - Zero Hedge, 27 October 2024

• The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, confronts political trouble -- but blames the opposition for organizing a "coup". Petro is dealing with an electoral investigation (allegedly, he spent too much to get elected) and administration scandals.
  - Al Jazeera, 27 October 2024

• The presidential election in Uruguay offer voters a choice between 2 moderate candidates, which defies trends of bitter division and democratic erosion in Latin America.
  - Associated Press, 27 October 2024

• The massive fishing fleet of Zhōngguó overwhelms the fisherman of Peru. Off the coast of Peru, one of the world's richest fishing grounds is under pressure from the fishing fleets of Zhōngguó.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 26 October 2024

• In Colombia, extreme drought (caused by global heating) affecting the Amazon River falls hard on Indigenous communities. "When the water is low, the first die." Since 2023, water levels for the Amazon River have dropped not only in Brazil, but other Amazon nations, wreaking havoc on local economies and food supplies.
  - Associated Press, 24 October 2024

• Conozca/know la correlación entre el peso mexicano y el peso colombiano respect al dólar
  - La Republica, 23 October 2024

• The Colombian peso drops with regional markets as oil prices decline
  - Fininimize, 23 October 2024

• $1,200,000,000 - The USA charges Venezuelan media tycoon with money laundering. Raul Gorrin Belisario, owner of Globovision, allegedly took part in $1.2 billion scheme to launder corrupt oil money.
  - Al Jazeera, 23 October 2024

• Dina Boluarte, the world's least popular president in Peru, with a 92 percent disapproval rating. A leftist, she has much support from right-wing corrupt Christian politicians in Congress. "As of May, more than half of legislators in Congress were facing active criminal investigation, according to the news website Infobae. But with their power virtually unchecked, legislators have been busy passing laws defanging oversight from other branches of government and protecting the financial interests of lawmakers and their cronies."
  - The Intercept, 23 October 2024

• Villagers are wary of plans to dam a river to ensure the water supply of Panama Canal. The plan would flood villages, where about 2,000 people would need to be relocated and where there is opposition to the plan, and curb the flow of the river to other communities downstream.
  - Associated Press, 22 October 2024

• The government of Cuba struggles to restore power after nationwide blackout. Electricity outages have paralyzed an already-crippled economy, leading to shortages of everything from cash to running water.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 22 October 2024

• $35,000,000 - An ex-president of Peru, Alejando Toledo, is sentenced to 20 years and six months in prison in a case involving Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, which became synonymous with corruption across Latin America, where it paid millions of dollars in bribes to government officials and others. Authorities accused Toledo of accepting $35 million in bribes from Odebrecht in exchange for allowing the construction of a highway in the South American country.
  - Associated Press, 21 October 2024

• Are the trees in the Amazon worth more alive than dead? A new industry thinks so. Brazil is encouraging bioplastics, ecotourism and fishing businesses in the rainforest to replace illegal logging and mining. For example, the native jaborandi shrub, which is used in glaucoma medication, is under cultivation near Parauapebas, Brazil.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 21 October 2024

• The electrical grid system of Cuba collapsed again early on Saturday morning, state-run media reported, plunging the entire country into blackout for a second time just hours after authorities announced they had begun reestablishing service.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 19 October 2024

• The electrical grid system of Cuba collapsed again early on Saturday morning, state-run media reported, plunging the entire country into blackout for a second time just hours after authorities announced they had begun reestablishing service.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 19 October 2024

• Cuba is forced to "paralyse the economy" amid desperate energy crisis. Cuba was hit by a nationwide blackout on Friday, but prime minister says Cuba is "not yet in a bottomless abyss". This includes shuttering all cultural activities and recreation centres such as discos, as well as public schools until Monday.
  - Al Jazeera, 18 October 2024

• A nationwide power outage plunges all of Cuba into darkness. The Cuban government had just announced emergency measures to reduce use of electricity -- then the power went out across the entire nation.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 October 2024

• AfroColombians in the Choco region of Colombia fight the efects of illegal gold mining through biodiversity projects in a violent region
  - Associated Press, 18 October 2024

• The coffee industry in Costa Rica is facing significant challenges due to rising labor costs and decreasing profits for producers. A major concern is that most of the revenue generated by the coffee industry does not make its way back to the producers. New regulations, potential increases in operational costs, and non-tariff barriers affecting coffee bean exports are all putting pressure on the short-term viability of the coffee sector in Costa Rica.
  - Tico Times, 18 October 2024

• Argentina likely had a trade surplus for the tenth straight month in September under libertarian President Javier Milei, helping to accumulate a net $16 billion in hard currency since he took office
  - Thomson's Reuters, 16 October 2024

• A giant hydraulic machine named Wanda has prevented hundreds of tons of garbage from ending up polluting the mangroves near the capital of Panama. Wanda is a machine that captures waste and separates what can be recycled. The energy that feeds Wanda is entirely green: a hydraulic wheel and solar panels.
  - Tico Times, 11 October 2024

• Locust plague threatens crops in Mexico and Central America. The danger is to crops from southern Mexico to Nicaragua due to the presence of the Central American Locust (Schistocerca piceifrons piceifrons) and the Giant Grasshopper (Tropidacris Cristata dux).
  - Tico Times, 10 October 2024

• Starbucks expands coffee farms in Costa Rica and Guatemala
  - Tico Times, 04 October 2024

• Starbucks is buying up coffee farms in Costa Rica to protect its supply. Starbucks is expanding its efforts to grow coffee beans productively with climate resilience and profitability for farmers.
  - Q Costa Rica, 04 October 2024

• The wage gap for Latin American women in the USA widens to $1.3 million for full-time and part-time workers. Latinas working full time, year-round were typically paid just 58 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 03 October 2024

• Three British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean - British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Bermuda - dominate the top eight roundup of places allowing multinationals to avoid paying tax on their profits. In total, this makes the UK responsible for about one third of global tax avoidance risk. Next are Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong (which was British controlled), Netherlands and Jersey (which is also British).
  - Zero Hedge, 02 October 2024

• The Colombian peso declines afer a local interest rate reduction, while most currencies set for monthly gains. The Colombian peso weakened 0.4% against the dollar after its central bank cut the benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points to 10.25%, a moderate cut as policymakers responded to local inflationary pressures despite international relaxations in borrowing costs.
  - Mint, 01 October 2024

• Elliott-led group named as winner of auction to acquire Citgo Petroleum based in Venezuela. Elliott and other investors in the USA have agreed to pay nearly $7.3 billion to acquire Citgo's parent company, with proceeds set to help compensate creditors of the bankrupt Venezuelan government.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 30 September 2024

• Microplastics threaten the beaches and marine ecosystems of Costa Rica
  - Tico Times, 28 September 2024

• Las altas tases/rates de interés del Banco de la República van a dejar de proteger al peso
  - La Republica, 27 September 2024

• Carry Drummond, the late CEO of US coal mining firm Drummond, personally allegedly ordered the assassination of labor union representatives at one of his company's mines in Colombia in 2001, according to war crimes tribunal JEP. Drummond allegedly ordered the killings because the activity of labor union Sintramienergetica was hampering profits. Drummond, who was also a member of the board of the Boy Scouts of America, died in 2016.
  - Colombia Reports, 26 September 2024

• Pope Francis took the unusual decision Wednesday to expel 10 people -- a Catholic Christian bishop, Catholic Christian priests and laypeople -- from a troubled Catholic Christian movement in Peru after a Vatican investigation uncovered "sadistic" abuses of power, authority and spirituality. The move against the leadership of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, or Sodalitium of Christian Life, followed the pope's decision last month to expel the sect's founder, Luis Figari, after he was found to have sodomized his recruits.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 25 September 2024

• Pope Francis took the unusual decision Wednesday to expel 10 people -- a Catholic Christian bishop, Catholic Christian priests and laypeople -- from a troubled Catholic Christian movement in Peru after a Vatican investigation uncovered "sadistic" abuses of power, authority and spirituality. The move against the leadership of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, or Sodalitium of Christian Life, followed the pope's decision last month to expel the sect's founder, Luis Figari, after he was found to have sodomized his recruits.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 25 September 2024

• How the lower interest rates in the USA affects the economy of Colombia
  - Mas Colombia, 19 September 2024

• In July, the Central Bank of Argentina (BCRA) shipped another 3 tons of gold to the UK to swap for foreign exchange. A month prior, BCRA also transported 3 tons to the UK. BCRA is now estimated to have 37 tons (60% of the gold reserves of Argentina) on swap in the London Bullion Market.
  - Money Metals, 17 September 2024

• The health/environmental crimes of the banana industry in Costa Rica - the hidden costs of the massive use of pesticides. Costa Rica is one of the largest users of pesticides in the world, averaging 34.45 kilograms of active ingredient per hectare annually. The pesticides chlorothalonil and mancozeb, both believed to be potentially carcinogenic, as well as chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxic agent, have been found in the blood of women and children living near plantations, where planes regularly spray these substances.
  - TicoTimes, 17 September 2024

• The communist-run government of Cuba on Monday slashed by 25% the weight of its subsidized ration of daily bread (from 80 grams to 60 grams), the latest shortage to strain a decades-old subsidies scheme created by the late Fidel Castro.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 17 September 2024

• UN experts decry worsening repression in Venezuela after contested election
  - Associated Press, 17 September 2024

• Another country being damaged by the hypocrisy of the drug laws of the Christian USA: the lush rainforests of Costa Rica, which blanket a quarter of the country, are being infiltrated by cartels on a quest to find new trafficking routes to evade the authorities.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 September 2024

• Venezuela arrests USA Navy SEAL among several foreigners behind alleged Maduro assassination plot
  - Zero Hedge, 15 September 2024

• A Venezuelan gang is expanding its deadly reach to the USA. Founded in a prison, Tren de Aragua involvement is suspected in 100 crimes in the USA, bringing its violent brand of robbery and drug trafficking north.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 13 September 2024

• FoodTech companies are making progress with beanless coffee. On the plus side, coffee cultivation is currently the sixth largest cause of deforestation, and will get worse as consumption rises in Bharat and Zhōngguó. On the misanthropic side, coffee growing provides livelihoods and income to many smallholder farming families globally, he further notes. The conundrum is if they move away from growing coffee, they will likely instead turn to growing more coca - which has similar deforestation issues.
  - BBC, 12 September 2024

• Colombia is the deadliest country for environmental activists. As Colombia prepares to host a global biodiversity summit, killings of environmental defenders in the country rose again last year, according to a new report. Colombia topped the list for the second year in a row, with 79 killings of environmentalists and activists last year, 19 more than the year prior. The second most deadly country was Brazil, with 25 killings. Almost half of the activists, which Global Witness calls environmental defenders, who were killed in Colombia were Indigenous, and many were either members of Afro-descendant communities or small-scale farmers.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 September 2024

• Breadfruit is here to save the world. This calorie-rich, nutrient-dense, and climate-resilient crop has the power to step in for more common staples that cannot handle global heating.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 September 2024

• The (winning) presidential contender flees Venezuela, as hopes for renewed democracy die. The opposition candidate's decision to seek asylum in Spain and the autocratic leader's (Maduro) antagonism toward regional powers lessen the chances of a political transition.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 September 2024

• USA Secretary of State Blinken visited Haiti as USA-backed police fail to wrestle control from gangs in Haiti
  - Zero Hedge, 09 September 2024

• Why is the Colombian peso performing better than other currencies in Latin America?
  - America Economia, 09 September 2024

• A powerful drought in the Amazon rainforest led on Monday to the lowest water levels on the Paraguay River in more than a century, disrupting commerce on the major waterway, creating hazards for local transport and offering a grim warning for other parts of the world about the dangers of global heating due to burning fossil fuels.
  - Associated Press, 09 September 2024

• Leaked documents from the USA Army: thousands of violent prison gang members from the USA run amok across the USA
  - Zero Hedge, 09 September 2024

• They are measuring the 'lungs' of the Earth. A small team in a remote corner of Colombia is surveying every tree in an effort to better understand how much planet-warming carbon the Amazon actually stores.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 September 2024

• Critics denounce the government of El Salvador. But many people in this country say they have never felt so free from the threats of criminals. Some constitutional rights like due process have been suspended under emergency measures, leading to a massive increase in incarceration, and an outcry from human rights groups. Many in El Salvador feel the trade-off (rights versus crime) is worth it.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 08 September 2024

• Chevron wants the oil to keep flowing in the dictatorship of Venezuela after a stolen election - profits over people. Behind the scenes, Chevron's message to the White House is that the oil giant needs to stay in Venezuela, even if Nicolas Maduro remains the dictator - profits over people.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 06 September 2024

• To save the Panama Canal from drought, a disruptive fix. In the wake of a drought that hampered shipping, the Panama Canal's overseers are eager to expand water storage. Climate change leaves them no choice.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 September 2024

• Tropical forests face increased soil carbon loss due to global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels
  - Phys.org, 03 September 2024

• In Paraguay, the country's first sex education program forces sexual doctrines on children: that condons cannot be trusted (false), the love is forever (nice wish) and that boys do not cry (emotion suppressing hateful advice)
  - Associated Press, 02 September 2024

• The Minister of Defense of Honduras, Carlos Zelaya, and his father, a deputy, who are the nephew and brother-in-law of President Xiomara Castro, resigned on Saturday amid a scandal over alleged links to drug trafficking, three days after the leftist leader canceled the extradition treaty with the United States.
  - Tico Times, 01 September 2024

• Illegal gold mining threatends the Corcovado national park in Costa Rica
  - Tico Times, 01 September 2024

• Honduras is threatening to ditch a bilateral extradition treaty, furthering a pattern of snubs delivered against the USA by an array of leaders in Latin America. Latin America resents the drug hypocrisy of the USA, and interference in local politics.
  - The Hill, 01 September 2024

• What happens when half a million people abandon their city. About a quarter of the residents of Maracaibo, the second-largest city in Venezuela, have moved away -- and more are expected to soon follow.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 September 2024

• The high price of safety in El Salvador, with its authoritarian crackdown on crime
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 September 2024

• The for-profit city that might come crashign down. The dream of Próspera, founded by a USA corporation off the coast of Honduras, was to escape government control. The government of Honduras wants it gone.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 September 2024

• ExxonMobil's oil opportunities in Guyana: a trillion dollar opportunity. XOM moves with higher or lower oil and gas prices and is likely to perform in lockstep with these commodities well into the future.
  - Zero Hedge, 31 August 2024

• "In some cases, it was the women who were fiercest in the fight": the female freedom fights of the Haitian revolution of the 18th century to gain independence from the slaveowners who controlled the country. How did they contribute, and why have their stories been buried for so long?
  - BBC, 29 August 2024

• The citizens of Ecuador voted to stop oil drilling in the heart of Amazon. A year later, it has not happened. Worse, the government is now seeking a five-year extension for the state-run oil company to get out.
  - Associated Press, 28 August 2024

• There is no evidence that Maduro won, a top election official says in Venezuela. In an interview with The New York Times, an electoral council official expressed grave doubts about claims to victory by the authoritarian president, Nicolas Maduro.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 August 2024

• In communist-run Cuba, the elderly are left to struggle on $10 pensions
  - Zero Hedge, 26 August 2024

• Exports of gold from Peru to Bharat will reach a record high in 2024, up 36% to a record $3 billion
  - Thomson's Reuters, 23 August 2024

• The corrupt Supreme Court of Venezuela, obedient to President Maduro, rules him the winner of the recent presidential elections, despite evidence that he lost. The court did not share voting data to back up its decision despite demands from Venezuelans and international election observers that the government produce evidence of his victory.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 August 2024

• The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, intensifies repression. The strongman is stripping away civil liberties after the opposition disputed his election victory.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 23 August 2024

• The USA sanctions the former president of Haiti for drug trafficking. The Treasury Department said former President Michel Martelly's actions have contributed significantly to the unraveling of security in the country.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 August 2024

• Nicaragua shutters 1,500 nonprofit groups, many of them churches. The government of President Daniel Ortega revoked the legal status of hundreds of evangelical groups as part of its crackdown on institutions that do not bow to its authority.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 August 2024

• People in Venezuela mourn loved family members killed in protests, and the last shreds of democracy. The nation is in anguish as it buries its dead and enters a new era of authoritarianism under President Maduro.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 August 2024

• The mission to clean up the Motagua river in Guatemala, one of the most polluted rivers in Central America. Each year, the river transports 40 million pounds of trash into the Caribbean Sea, about 2% of the total oil-derived plastic waste that enters the oceans of the world each year.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 19 August 2024

• A political party in Costa Rica proposes a new law that would force Uber to improve the working conditions of its serf contractors/workers. Among the workers' demands are payment for tolls and an increase pay in the event of rainy conditions. Delivery workers are also forced to give 40% of their salary to their overlords at Uber, significantly reducing their overall earnings.
  - Tico Times, 17 August 2024

• A three-day strike at BHP's massive Escondida copper mine in Chile was halted on Friday after management and a large union reached a deal, the miner said, easing concerns about a hit to global supplies of the metal
  - Thomson's Reuters, 16 August 2024

• Wage negotiations at the Escondida copper mine run by BHP Group in northern Chile ended without agreement, triggering a walkout at an operation that accounts for roughly 5% of global mined copper supply
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 13 August 2024

• Mining giant BHP said on Tuesday that it had started removing workers on strike at its Escondida copper mine in Chile, deepening tensions at the site after a powerful union rejected the company's latest invitation for talks on pay. London-listed shares of BHP and copper prices each fell less than 1% on Tuesday.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 13 August 2024

• Workers at BHP's Escondida mine in Chile began a strike Tuesday after failing to reach a wage agreement with management, setting the stage for a major disruption at the biggest copper operation in the world
  - Bloomberg, 13 August 2024

• Salmon farms in Patagonia face growing opposition. The salmon industry's expansion in Chile has drawn repeated challenges from environmentalists and Indigenous people of the region, and prompted calls for a moratorium. Chile is the top exporter of farmed salmon to the United States, the industry generating $6.5 billion in revenue in 2023. But the salmon industry has often been criticized for its heavy use of antimicrobials and accused of polluting waterways and contributing to record algal blooms. As primary aquaculture districts have deteriorated alongside the growing international demand, Chilean salmon farming has expanded into the pristine wilderness of the southernmost region of Chile, the Magallanes, in Patagonia.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 August 2024

• Black men rally for Kamala Harris, and confront an elephant in the room - it is not weak to support a woman. "I am standing behind a Black woman to be president of the United States, and it does not make me any less of a Black man.", said the Illinois attorney general. "I am asking all of you [Black men] all to do the same." Scholars note that a demographic group that is conservative on many social issues has historically equated leadership with masculinity, borne out in the dearth of Black female leaders in the church, business and elected office.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 August 2024

• In secret talks, the USA offers amnesty to Venezuela's Maduro for ceding power. The long-shot American efforts are fueled by an opposition attempt to document Maduro's overwhelming defeat at the polls.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 12 August 2024

• The authoritarian government of Venezuela sweeps up dissenters after disputed vote. Authorities in Venezuela have launched a nationwide sweep, called Operation Knock-Knock, that is targeting anyone even perceived to be challenging the autocratic president's re-election.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 August 2024

• After the stolen contested presidential election in Venezuela, experts say that government results are a "statistical improbablility"
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 09 August 2024

• Nicolas Maduro, the authoritarian dictator of Venezuela, was confident of winning the presidential elections again. Then came the shock. A rebellion by supporters of the government undid the plan. Vote tallies showed that the ruling party's supporters in the public sector and poor neighborhoods had abandoned Maduro in droves, according to vote tallies obtained by the opposition. Why to do? Steal the election. Shortly after midnight, the electoral council declared Mr. Maduro the winner, announcing vote totals that do not appear to have been based on the ballots recorded by the electoral system.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 August 2024

• $2,900,000,000 - Healthcare intermediaries in Colombia - now mostly bankrupt middlemen - wasted $2.9 billion during the Covid pandemic. According to the Comptroller General's Office of Colombia, the healthcare intermediaries, used $1.5 billion of emergency funds meant for hospital beds to cancel outstanding debts, grant bonuses to directors and even provide yoga for personnel.
  - Colombia Reports, 07 August 2024

• Gustavo Petro, the first leftist president of Colombia in modern times, faces economic struggles and a legislative standstill. The government's pension reform is the sole major legislation to have been enacted into law, and only after it was diluted by the Congress. Health and labor reforms are stuck and unlikely to pass the legislature in their proposed form.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 07 August 2024

• The authoritarian president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, orders the arrest of 2000 people protesting his stealing of the recent presidential election
  - Zero Hedge, 05 August 2024

• Election receipts show that the opposition overwhelmingly trounced the authoritarian president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, in the recent presidential elections.
  - The Hill, 05 August 2024

• The July 28 presidential election in Venezuela is causing trouble for Brazilian President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva. The 78-year-old leftist has spent his adult life endorsing Fidel Castro while claiming to care deeply about human rights and democracy. He has mostly gotten away with it. But now he is up to his neck in the defense of the military dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro as the authoritarian leader of Venezuela tries to steal an election.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 August 2024

• The Biden administration recognized the rival of dictator Maduro as the winner of elections on Sunday in Venezuela. Yet President Maduro shows no sign of being willing to leave office.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 August 2024

• Capitalist socialism in Venezuela: "In recent years, the socialist model has given way to brutal capitalism, economists say, with a small state-connected minority controlling much of the wealth of Venezuela". As usual.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 03 August 2024

• Election results presented by opposition political parties in Venezuela show that the country's dictator, Nicolas Maduro, decisively lost the presidential election
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 August 2024

• How did Venezuela arrive at this tragic point of economic and political chaos? Increasing state interference in the economy and massive over-regulation led to the situation in the once rich country constantly deteriorating. But the example of Venezuela shows that when the economic situation worsens, voters may well opt for a supposed solution that makes their situation much worse.
  - Real Clear Markets, 01 August 2024

• The recent elections in Venezuela are denounced by an international monitoring group
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 August 2024

• The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, relies on the military, corruption and fear to remain in power
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 01 August 2024

• Street clashes turn deadly in Venezuela, as the political power struggle deepens. The fatal violence comes as both President Nicolás Maduro and the opposition claimed victory in the presidential election. More protests were taking place on Tuesday.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 July 2024

• Street clashes turn deadly in Venezuela, as the political power struggle deepens. The fatal violence comes as both President Nicolás Maduro and the opposition claimed victory in the presidential election. More protests were taking place on Tuesday.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 31 July 2024

• The government of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela ejects seven diplomatic missions from seven countries that condemned his theft of the recent presidential elections, as protests erupt in Venezuela denouncing election results
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 30 July 2024

• The government of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela ejects seven diplomatic missions from seven countries that condemned his theft of the recent presidential elections, as protests erupt in Venezuela denouncing election results
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 30 July 2024

• Evening protests explode in Venezuela as opposition crowds descend on Caracas, head to presidential palace to protest the latest presidential election stolen by Nicolas Maduro and his government
  - Zero Hedge, 29 July 2024

• Venezuela's bonds and those of state oil firm PDVSA fell deeper into distressed territory (some below 15 cents to the dollar) on Monday, after President Nicolas Maduro stole the latest presidential elections
  - Thomson's Reuters, 29 July 2024

• Codelco posted a decline in first-half copper production as setbacks at its mines and projects in Chile loosen the state-owned s grip on the title of world's biggest supplier of the metal.
  - Bloomberg, 26 July 2024

• President Maduro of Venezuela hunts dissidents abroad, ahead of elections in Venezuela. Deadly reprisals allegedly carried out by government agents and gang members spread across borders as Venezuelans flee the authoritarian rule of President Nicolás Maduro.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 26 July 2024

• The 'Iron Lady' of Venezuela threatens to unseat its autocrat. Spurned by the authoritarian president of Venezuela, and even her own colleagues in the opposition, María Corina Machado has built the most significant voter mobilization since Hugo Chávez.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 25 July 2024

• In Venezuela, disillusioned former socialists now back the opposition
  - Thomson's Reuters, 25 July 2024

• The Santa Cruz province/department of Bolivia declares an emergency due to extreme weather including wildfires. "A departmental emergency is declared due to the climatic changes, which have and are causing heavy rains, floods, droughts, strong winds, extreme temperatures, forest fires, environmental pollution and other events."
  - Thomson's Reuters, 25 July 2024

• Putting profits over ethics and morality , some oil executives and Wall Street creditors in the USA are quietly embracing the authoritarian President Maduro, while his opponents say democracy is needed to restore the rule of law.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 July 2024

• Mayan people in Guatemala commemorate five centuries of resistance to five centuries of suppression of their culture by white Christians that started with the "cruel and violent" invasion by white Christian rapists from Spain in the 1500s
  - Tico Times, 22 July 2024

• Protection of Indigenous communities in Brazil from violence by land grabbers and ranchers was "insufficient" in 2023, according to a report, opens new tab published on Monday, dashing hopes that the situation would improve under leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 22 July 2024

• Zhōngguó invests heavily in a new port in Peru, north of Lima
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 22 July 2024

• Can salt mitigate the hunger of its salt miners? Inside the salt flats of La Guajira, Colombia. The salt production had sustained entire communities of the local Wayuu Indigenous people, but not now, unless the government of Colombia helps out.
  - Al Jazeera, 19 July 2024

• $17,000,000 - A judge in Bogota, the capital of Colombia, sentenced a businessman - Luis Fernando Duque - to four years in prison for embezzling more than $17 million meant to provide internet to children in rural communities. Duque will also pay a $1.7 million fine for his role in the crime.
  - Colombia Reports, 19 July 2024

• Cuba admits to massive emigration wave: a million people (about 10% of the population) have left Cuba in the last two years amid crisis. Non-government statistics argue that 18% of the prople of Cuba have fled the country. One problem is that food production has collapsed in the country.
  - Miami Herald, 19 July 2024

• Losing hope, people in Venezuela vow to leave their country if the authoritarian Maduro wins. As many as one-third of the people in Venezuela would consider migrating if the authoritarian leader is given another six years in power in an election set for July 28, one poll showed.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 July 2024

• Facebook is training its generative AI with public Instagram posts. Artists in Latin America cannot opt out - and Facebook doesn't care. Latin America lacks robust data protection laws that would allow Meta users in the region to prohibit the company from using their content.
  - Rest of the World, 15 July 2024

• $14,000,000 - Panama fines Naturgy $14 million for poor electricity service in the country. Naturgy, based in Spain, "failed to comply" with quality standards in electricity distribution.
  - Zero Hedge, 15 July 2024

• El fortalecimiento del peso frente al dólar hace caer exportaciones de ganado en pie
  - La Republica, 09 July 2024

• The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, faces allegations of an affair with a transgender woman. Married Gustavo Petro was seen on video hand-in-hand with highest profile transgender woman in Colombia, Linda Yepes.
  - The Daily Beast, 04 July 2024

• Hurricane Beryl batters Jamaica as 2 other islands, Carriacou and Petite Martinique, lie in ruin with marinas and a hospital destroyed, rooftops torn away and tree trunks snapped like matchsticks across the drenched earth. The powerful storm, which devastated communities in the eastern Caribbean earlier this week, was headed next to the Cayman Islands.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 July 2024

• The Christian president of Catholic Costa Rica fires two officials over their support of a LGBT Pride march in the capital, San Jose.
  - Tico Times, 30 June 2024

• People in Costa Rica question/criticize a $2 million subsidy given by the state oil company, RECOPE, to Ad Astra Rocket company to help them develop hyrdrogen technology
  - Tico Times, 29 June 2024

• A judge in Panama has acquitted 28 people accused of money laundering in an international case known as the Panama Papers, including the co-founder of a law firm that authorities say was at the center of a conspiracy to hide money linked to illegal activities. A judge in Panama found that the evidence against Mossack [conveniently] didn't comply with the chain of custody after authorities raided the office of the now defunct firm.
  - Associated Press, 29 June 2024

• A judge in Panama has acquitted 28 people accused of money laundering in an international case known as the Panama Papers, including the co-founder of a law firm that authorities say was at the center of a conspiracy to hide money linked to illegal activities. A judge in Panama found that the evidence against Mossack [conveniently] didn't comply with the chain of custody after authorities raided the office of the now defunct firm.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 June 2024

• Monaco and Venezuela are placed on global money-laundering watch list. The Financial Action Task Force also removed Jamaica and Turkey from the gray list.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 29 June 2024

• With global coffee production under threat from global heating and fungal diseases, coffee farmers seek new solutions. One study in a journal, Science, estimates that 60 percent of all coffee species are at risk of extinction. "Research shows that the number of regions best suited for growing coffee will be cut in half over the course of the next 25 years or so."
  - Zero Hedge, 28 June 2024

• Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras, is sentenced to 45 years in jail in the USA for working with drug traffickers as his country became a base of operations for cocaine shipments to the United States. He is responsible for less deaths than the Sackler drug trafficking family, and made less money than the Sacklers, so why aren't the Sacklers in jail for 45 years?
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 June 2024

• The banking regulators in Costa Rica (Sugef and Conassif) are mostly unable or unwilling to properly and timely monitor banks. Although Costa Rica has extensive regulations regarding regulation and control over the operation, accountability and functioning of financial entities, the supervisors are lax, slow and not very proactive in making appropriate decisions to safeguard the investments of people in Costa Rica.
  - Q Costa Rica, 27 June 2024

• At least 36 people were arrested this Tuesday in Costa Rica in a vast police operation, including judges, lawyers, and two Spanish ringleaders of the gang dedicated to property theft and money laundering through cryptocurrencies, authorities reported.
  - Tico Times, 27 June 2024

• The military flees from the government palace in Bolivia after coup attempt fails, with the commanding general taken into custody. In a political twist, the general claimed that President Arce himself told the general to storm the palace in a political move.
  - Associated Press, 26 June 2024

• There are emerging reports of a military coup going down in Bolivia on Wednesday, with embattled President Luis Arce denouncing the "irregular mobilization" of some units of the national army.
  - Zero Hedge, 26 June 2024

• Protesters streamed into the capital of Bolivia, throats hoarse from chanting and feet blistered from a week of walking along the national highway. The throngs of street vendors in the the vast informal work force of Bolivia ended their nearly 100-kilometer (60-mile) march from the mountain-rimmed plains with a call that summoned years of growing anger over the nation's dangerously depleting foreign-exchange reserves: "We want dollars!". With prices surging, dollars scarce and lines snaking away from fuel-strapped gas stations, protests in Bolivia have intensified over the precipitous decline of the economy from one of the fastest-growing in South America two decades ago to one of its most crisis-stricken today
  - Business Insider, 22 June 2024

• It is the longest bridge ever built in Peru, a massive structure of cement and iron spanning the Nanay River as it connects to untouched areas of the Peruvian Amazon. So far, it goes nowhere. It faces mounting opposition from Indigenous tribes who fear that the construction will lead to land grabbing, deforestation and drug trafficking, which have plagued similar projects across the largest rainforest in the world.
  - Associated Press, 21 June 2024

• Ecuador suspends its visal deal with Zhōngguó amid a flood of migrants from Zhōngguó travelling to the USA
  - Zero Hedge, 19 June 2024

• Pese a la caída que tuvo el precio de dólar, el peso colombiano mantuvo las pérdidas
  - La Republica, 18 June 2024

• Look to women for sustainable livestock farming bordering the Amazon rainforest, says study. In the southern Colombian department of Caquetá, which is recovering from decades of armed conflict and is now beset by reckless deforestation and the destructive forces of climate change, the people leading the change tend to be women, new research shows. When women are in charge of the land (and only 15% of them were in the study), they are more likely than men to have silvopastoral livestock systems, where cattle meander through trees and eat plants grown on the landscape. Whether they manage the land or not, women are more willing to integrate nature into livestock farming.
  - Phys.org, 18 June 2024

• According to the most recent investigation by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), focused on the Sixaola River watershed in Costa Rica, a mixture of 33 pesticides has been detected contaminating its lower section, including the Gandoca Lagoon within the protected wildlife area. The report states that the intensive use of agrochemicals in the country reduces the profitability of agricultural production, raises food prices, and contaminates water sources for human consumption. This endangers marine species and large international markets.
  - Tico Times, 18 June 2024

• $29 trillion - that is how much debt that emerging nations are facing. A decades-long crisis is getting worse, and now dozens of nations are spending more on interest payments than on health care or education.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 June 2024

• The Colombian peso weakens against the USA dollar due to fiscal uncertainty with the national budget
  - City Paper Bogota, 14 June 2024

• The Colombian peso slumps as traders eye revised fiscal plans
  - Mint, 13 June 2024

• How a new megaport built by Zhōngguó in Chancay, Peru, is rattling the USA. The Peru project could speed trade with Asia and plant Zhōngguó's flag in the 'neighborhood' of the USA.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 13 June 2024

• The 'iron fist' of José Raúl Molino, the new president of Panama. A former law enforcement chief under disgraced ex-President Ricardo Martinelli, the president-elect of Panama has a dubious human rights and criminal justice record.
  - NACLA, 11 June 2024

• $38,300,000 - A federal court jury in Florida ruled that Chiquita Brands, a giant in the banana industry, must pay $38.3 million in damages to the families of eight men in Colombia killed by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a right-wing militia.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 June 2024

• A reporter's work helped topple presidents. But now he is being investigated. Press freedom groups say the investigation of Gustavo Gorriti, a noted journalist in Peru, is politically motivated and part of a growing campaign against the news media. He is being accused of bribery by the attorney general.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 June 2024

• The cats of Old San Juan are being run out of town. Locals can empathize. A federal plan to remove feral cats from a historic site in the capital of Puerto Rico has upset some residents, who are also feeling pushed out as housing costs soar as investors buy properties, which pushes up rents and home prices.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 June 2024

• The Buenos Aires Yoga School promised spiritual salvation practicing yoga, but former members and prosecutors say it pushed some female members into prostitution as it cultivated powerful friends to create a sex cult.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 June 2024

• Heeding Senator Lugar's warning on the cost of ignoring Latin America. As America turned its gaze elsewhere, many Latin American countries grew closer to some of our fiercest competitors. As Latin American nations increasingly turn towards markets in Zhōngguó, their ability to withstand political pressures will be rigorously tested.
  - The Hill, 07 June 2024

• The toll to pass through the Panama Canal for natural gas carriers rises to $1 million. But data shows costs now falling at waterway as delays shrink.
  - Tradewinds, 05 June 2024

• Thirsty in paradise: the water crisis on the islands of the Caribbean. Trinidad, Dominica, Granada and Jamaica are experiencing recurrent shortages of water, leading to fines and rationing.
  - El Tiempo, 02 June 2024

• The Vatican is being asked by victims to investigate a secretive Catholic society in Peru that abused its recruits with impunity. The evil society, the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae has been mired in scandal since its layman founder Luis Fernando Figari and other senior members were accused of sexually abusing numerous adult and minor recruits.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 31 May 2024

• President Biden acts to open banks in the USA to the private sector of Cuba
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 30 May 2024

• The government of Peru issued a decree calling transexual identity a disorder. A backlash followed. Government officials say the regulation was intended to expand mental health care access for transgender people. Activists say it will increase discrimination. Many critics said the rule was another blow in a country where gay marriage and civil unions are illegal; transgender identity is not legally recognized; there is no legislation recognizing hate crimes; and trans Peruvians say they face widespread discrimination and violence.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 May 2024

• A huge oil industry deal, a $53 billion megadeal, entwines the legacies of three CEOs. The leaders of Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Hess are duking it out over a generational oil discovery in Guyana.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 May 2024

• Crime in Mexico is hurting growth. Presidential candidates have no new solutions.
  - Barron's, 25 May 2024

• Los bonos de Colombia caen tras las alertas del Presidente Petro sobre el techo de deuda
  - La Republica, 24 May 2024

• In a setback for Zhōngguó, the president of Argentina, Javier Milei, is interested in cooperating with the USA with regards to defense
  - Zero Hedge, 23 May 2024

• Economic activity in Argentina dropped 8.4% in March, the biggest decline since 2020. This reflects the impact of libertarian President Javier Milei's cost-cutting policies since taking office in December. Milei has embarked on a painful austerity drive in an effort to bring down rising poverty and annual inflation near 300%.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 22 May 2024

• Venezuela bans cryptocurrency-mining to protect its electric power grid
  - Zero Hedge, 20 May 2024

• Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein steps down amid relentless ETF outflows. The simplest reason for the outflows is that while GBTC charges a 1.5% fee, all other bitcoin ETFs charge next to nothing.
  - Zero Hedge, 20 May 2024

• Dominican President poised to win re-election as voters eye crisis in Haiti. President Luis Abinader was bolstered by nativist migration policies, a strong economy and an anticorruption drive.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 20 May 2024

• Heat stress is hitting Caribbean reefs earlier than ever this year
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 May 2024

• Venezuela moves "substantial quantities" of troops to its border with Guyana, actions related to a territorial dispute involving new oil finds in the Caribbean
  - Zero Hedge, 15 May 2024

• Peru classifies transgender and intersex people as "mentally ill", as a cruel way to extend them health benefits
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 15 May 2024

• Elon Musk has built a constellation of like-minded heads of state - many racist and authoritarian, including Narendra Modia of Bharat and Javier Milei of Argentina.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 May 2024

• The Falklands have just become the most valuable piece of real estate on earth. The discovery by Rossiya of vast oil reserves in the British Antarctic Territory has fired the starting gun on a mad scramble for resources.
  - Barclay's The Telegraph, 13 May 2024

• The new libertarian president of Argentina pledged shock therapy. So far, all he is delivering is economic pain. Poverty, hunger and food prices are rising, but Javier Milei says the "promise of prosperity" is at hand if his overhaul can take hold.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 13 May 2024

• Can elections allow Maduro, the authoritarian leader of Venezuela, from power?
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 May 2024

• Costa Rica is experiencing the worst drought in 50 years, forcing the temperary rationing of water and electricity. Other countries in Central America are facing the same problems.
  - Q Costa Rica, 10 May 2024

• Standard Fruit Company de Costa Rica S.A. confirmed the dismissal of another 412 workers from banana farms in the province of Limón. "The reason is the abrupt appreciation of the Costa Rican coló:n or the exchange rate, which does not allow the agricultural activity to survive."
  - Tico Times, 09 May 2024

• The state-owned company based in Zhōngguó at the center of a dispute over operations of a megaport it is building on Pacific coast of Peru insisted on Tuesday on terms agreed with the government, as some local officials have sought to backtrack on the deal. Hong Kong-based Cosco Shipping Ports will defend its legal rights to provide services as the exclusive operator of the deepwater Chancay Port Terminal.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 08 May 2024

• The drought that snarled the Panama Canal was linked to El Niño, a study finds. The low water levels that choked cargo traffic were more closely tied to the natural climate cycle than to human-caused warming, a team of scientists has concluded.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 May 2024

• In the communist stronghold of Cuba, capitalists become an economic lifeline. The Communist revolution in Cuba took aim at private businesses, making them largely illegal. Today, they are proliferating, while the socialist economy declines.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 30 April 2024

• Mexico has established new or higher tariffs on a long list of imports, directly affecting Zhōngguó and raising questions over what else could be planned. Pressures mounting on Latin American country to limit its trade relationship with Zhōngguó, especially as these countries are a 'springboard' to markets in the USA.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 30 April 2024

• How fentanyl laid waste to the time-worn opium trade in Guatemala. Reshaping the drug war in one of the most lawless corners of Central America, the fentanyl boom has devastated the trade in opium poppies used to make heroin. Prices of opium have plunged from $64 per ounce to $10. In Guatemala, poppy farmers are losing their primary income from what had been their only cash crop, forcing many in already poverty-stricken areas to migrate to the United States. At the same time, local and international authorities fear that Guatemala could emerge as a new hub for trading in the chemicals used to make fentanyl.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 April 2024

• Venezuela's use of digital currencies, expected to increase after the USA ordered a wind-down of oil deals with the sanctioned country by May 31, will require greater scrutiny by regulators and law enforcement, experts said on Monday.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 29 April 2024

• Government officials in the USA are deeply alarmed at new reports that Zhōngguó is greatly expanding its economic, diplomatic, and possibly even military presence in the island paradise region of the Caribbean, just off America's doorstep. Newsweek says it has in its possession leaked documents which show Zhōngguó has established a sprawling economic zone and outpost on Antigua and Barbuda, and has "secured privileges that resemble those of a small state".
  - Zero Hedge, 28 April 2024

• The Colombian peso, which saw a robust 15% appreciation against the US dollar over the past year, braces for a potential downturn in the coming months. The value of the Colombian peso has been sliding consistently over the past ten trading sessions. Analysts warn that this downward trajectory may accelerate in the near future, particularly as the central bank of Colombia prepares to reduce interest rates.
  - Nearshore Americas, 24 April 2024

• The Colombian peso turns bearish again, as US Durable Goods data leads a rally in the USA dollar
  - FX Leaders, 24 April 2024

• Venezuela's state-run oil company PDVSA plans to increase digital currency usage in its crude and fuel exports as the USA reimposes oil sanctions on the country
  - Thomson's Reuters, 23 April 2024

• The people of Ecuador, a country awash in violence, support their president's hard-line stance. Voters in Ecuador gave their new president, Daniel Noboa, who deployed the military to fight gangs in January, even more powers, in national elections on Sunday.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 April 2024

• "We cannot hunt or fish": Indigenous villages in the Amazon part of Ecuador are surrounded by abandoned explosives. In 2002, high explosives were laid in oil wells across 20 sq km of forest. The incompetent company from Argentina has gone but the pentolite remains, despite a court ruling, putting lives and the ecosystem at risk.
  - The Guardian, 18 April 2024

• In Bogota, with a strong culture of riding bicycles, the riders fear becomign crime victims. With more than 1.1 million bicycles in the city, a number of high-profile crimes have rattled cyclists.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 April 2024

• Pope Francis sides with Peruvian villagers who accused a Catholic group of trying to steal their land. The villagers have been fending off lawsuits from companies associated with the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae since 2014. The Sodalitium has come under increased scrutiny in recent years after its founder and some of its main leaders were accused of committing sexual abuses against children. Prosecutors in Peru have also launched investigations into the finances of the Sodalitium and have accused the group of hiding money in offshore bank accounts.
  - Associated Press, 13 April 2024

• Massive genocide trial reopens old wounds in Guatemala, 40 years after the slaughter of indigenous Maya. Their deaths took place in the middle of Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war as a series of military governments backed by the USA attacked leftist rebels across the country. Guatemala's counterinsurgency campaign led to the death of over 200,000 people, 83% of whom were indigenous Maya, according to a United Nations-backed truth commission in 1999.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 13 April 2024

• From nasty insults to an embassy raid: Latin American relations get personal. Ecuador's raid of Mexico's embassy shows how foreign policy is often driven by personal politics, not national interest.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 April 2024

• Bogota, one of the highest cities in the world, starts retioning water as reservoirs fall to critical levels. The Chuza and San Rafael reservoirs, part of the Chingaza System that provides 70% of the drinking water in Bogota, are at particularly critical positions.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 11 April 2024

• Renewable energy technologies from Zhōngguó are pouring into Latin America
  - Economist, 11 April 2024

• HSBC, the big bank based in the UK, has agreed to sell its business in Argentina to Grupo Financiero Galicia for $550 million
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 09 April 2024

• Are the new oil riches of Guyana a blessing or a curse? More than any single country, Guyana demonstrates the struggle between the consequences of climate change and the lure of the oil economy.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 April 2024

• Mexico is breaking diplomatic ties with Ecuador after police raided its embassy in Quito to arrest former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas. Glas was seeking asylum, after being twice convicted on corruption charges (inclduing excepting bribes from Odebrecht).
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 06 April 2024

• The new hard authoritarian right in Latin America: Bukele, Milei, Kast and Bolsanaro
  - Economist, 04 April 2024

• Vineyards in South America prepare for tricky summers ahead. Climate change is hurting the wine regions of Chile and Argentina.
  - Economist, 04 April 2024

• Poor nations are writing a new handbook for getting rich. Economies focused on exports have lifted millions out of poverty, but epochal changes in trade, supply chains and technology are making it a lot harder.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 April 2024

• Crime gangs in Haiti are building arsenals and bringing the country to the brink of disaster, as law enforcement struggles to stop the large flow of guns from the Christian USA.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 02 April 2024

• Venezuela battles a record number of wildfires worsened by drougght in the Amazon
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 02 April 2024

• Houthi-style piracy in the Middle East is exportable. Ocean patrols by 'pirate' vessels from Venezuela are already violating the maritime boundary of Guyana.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 01 April 2024

• Police raid the home of the president of Peru, looking for Rolex watches
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 March 2024

• How the United States has failed to help the economy of Puerto Rico
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 March 2024

• Colombia expels diplomats from Argentina after President Milei of Argentina calls President Petro of Colombia a "terrorist murderer" in CNN interview
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 28 March 2024

• The cocaine trade is booming in the Caribbean territories of Europe
  - Economist, 28 March 2024

• Human rights crisis in El Salvador is "deepening", according to Amnesty International. Rights group says President Nayib Bukele has reduced gang violence by replacing it with state violence. As of February 2024, Bukele's draconian two-year campaign, which has seen the authorities detain about 78,000 people, has caused 235 deaths in state custody.
  - International Man, 27 March 2024

• Amid blackouts and scarce food, protests in Cuba rattle Santiago, the 'cradle" of the revolution.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 27 March 2024

• The other border wall going up south of the USA. The Dominican Republic is constructing a wall to keep out Haitians, as chaos engulfs the neighboring country. It is the latest phase in centuries of bitter division there.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 March 2024

• Bharat suspends purchases of oil from Venezuela fearing USA sanctions return, and stops accepting oil tankers from Rossiya
  - Zero Hedge, 26 March 2024

• Shipbrokers in the Atlantic dry bulk freight market are starting to price routes via the Panama Canal for the first time since October 2023, according to shipping sources. Waiting times at the canal have fallen to about three days on average.
  - MarkwetWatch, 26 March 2024

• The youngest mayor in Ecuador, Brigitte Garcia, is murdered along with her advisor, amid a state of emergency against gangs after violence ensued following "internal armed conflict".
  - USA Today, 26 March 2024

• The weapons and ammunition that circulate in Haiti and that sow mourning in Haiti are coming from elsewhere and, for the most part, from the United States. Why isn't the USA doing anything to halt this export of misery.
  - Al Jazeera, 25 March 2024

• One in four people in Costa Rica borrow money to pay for food and utilities. Research shows that a quarter of loan recipients use the funds for essential needs like buying food, personal items, or covering utility bills such as water and electricity.
  - Q Costa Rica, 25 March 2024

• Zhōngguó is helping Panama complete the PanAmerican Highway that has a gap in the Darien. A two-fer: good economic investment for Zhōngguó (as it invests billions in Latim America) while its completion will worsen mass migration into the USA.
  - Zero Hedge, 23 March 2024

• Why the Panama Canal did not lose money when ship crossings fell. A water shortage forced officials to reduce traffic, but higher fees increased revenue. In the 12 months through September, the canal's revenue rose 15 percent, to nearly $5 billion, even though the tonnage shipped through the canal fell 1.5 percent.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 March 2024

• The government of Cuba races to head off protests as shortages spread, tensions build. The Communist government has limited resources to improve living conditions before the summer heat sets in and power demand soars.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 21 March 2024

• How the city of Bogota is sending men to school to learn how to care about their families. Since 2021, the radical, city-run project has been teaching men across Colombia's sprawling capital how to be better husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, and any other societally-defined masculine role.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 20 March 2024

• Reservoirs (embalses) in Colombia are 33% filled. If they drop to 6% more to 27%, a red alert will be raised and water restrictions imposed as at these levels, it is harder to generate power
  - El Nuevo Siglo, 20 March 2024

• "Root to Rice", an attempt by Costa Rica to lower rice prices by mostly eliminating import taxes on rice, failed, as prices of rice continued to rise (good for rich importers) while 9000 rice workers lost their jobs
  - QCostaRica, 20 March 2024

• Sexual conversion therapies place Costa Rica on countries that apply torture
  - QCostaRica, 19 March 2024

• The exchange rate of Costa Rica colones drops under 500 colones for one US dollar, the first time in 17 years, as the colon gains strength, which hurts local businesspeople (who export) and people with loans denominated in dollars. No other country in the last year has seen such a significant increase in the value of its currency compared to the dollar.
  - Q Costa Rica, 19 March 2024

• The Panama Canal has avoided the worst of a shipping crunch that threatened to upend the global economy -- but at a cost to marine life and the the supplies of drinking water for Panama. Some of the seawater that is recycled in the Canal is leaking into the freshwater Lake Gatun, making the water saltier - which is used for drinking water in central Panama.
  - Phys.org, 18 March 2024

• Protests erupt in Cuba amid food shortages and blackouts
  - Zero Hedge, 18 March 2024

• The deadliest fire in Chile is said to have been made worse by a lack of water. Poor water pressure and dry hydrants posed major obstacles to fighting the February fire that killed scores of people along the Pacific Coast of Chile in the region of Valparaiso.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 March 2024

• While the USA ignores Latin America, Zhōngguó is investing. With its Belt and Road Initiative, Zhōngguó has become South America's largest source of infrastructure investment and second-largest trading partner, increasing trade from $18 billion in 2002 to $450 billion in 2022.
  - Zero Hedge, 16 March 2024

• Native groups in Argentina sit on a treasure trove of lithium. Now mines threaten their water, culture and wealth. While the water inside the lithium lagoons is not drinkable, they are tethered to surrounding fresh water sources, sparse rains and nearby mountain streams, essential for the survival of thousands of indigenous communities.
  - Associated Press, 13 March 2024

• Shares of MercadoLIbre (MELI), the Amazon.com of South America, look like a buy. Investors looking for an alternative to the Magnificent Seven could do worse than this popular online retailer.
  - Barron's, 09 March 2024

• Juan Orlando Hernández, an ex-president of Honduras (from 2014 until 2022), is found guilty of drug trafficking in a fdeeral court in the USA. He had been accused of conspiring to import cocaine into the USA and working with notorious drug traffickers like El Chapo.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 March 2024

• Who are the gangs that have overrun the capital of Haiti? The Caribbean has plunged into disorder and violence with gangs controlling access to the main airport and seaports, and taking command of many parts of Port-au-Prince.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 March 2024

• Corruption is surging across Latin America. Political blowback from a period of intense anti-corruption campaigns (such as Brazil's Lava Jato scandal) is to blame. Courts are encouraging the corruption by reducing/cancelling settlements involving large corporations guilty of corruption such as Odebrecht/Novonor and J&F/JBS.
  - Economist, 07 March 2024

• President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador detranisitions gender theory from public schools. Meanwhile in Argentina, President Javier Milei is on a similar mission to undo years of feminist policies - demoting the Minister of Women, Gender and Diversity to the level of undersecretary, and announcing that the government will prohibit so-called 'inclusive' language and "anything related to the gender perspective" in the administration.
  - Zero Hedge, 07 March 2024

• The Colombian peso appreciates to 3933 pesos to the USA dollar, and consolidates its position as one of the most overvalued currencies. The strength of the Colombian peso stands out as it surpassed an initial economic uncertainty of 2024 when the US dollar reached 5,000 Colombian pesos. The Central Bank of Colombia projects that by the end of 2024, the average exchange rate will be 4,081 pesos per dollar.
  - FX Leaders, 06 March 2024

• The "Route to Rice", a failed government program in Costa Rica, eliminated import taxes on rice that saved rich importers over $4 million, while bankrupting 331 local producers of rice, while doing nothing to lower the price of rice in Costa Rica
  - Semanario Universidad, 06 March 2024

• Indigenous women in Bolivia take up taekwondo against gender-based violence. Bolivia has one of the highest rates of gender violence, with 80 percent women experiencing it in their lifetime.
  - Al Jazeera, 06 March 2024

• Alberto Otarola, the prime minister of Peru, quits amid claims of influence peddling. Alberto Otarola denies allegations that he attempted to improperly influence government contracts to help love interest.
  - Al Jazeera, 06 March 2024

• Panama bars ex-leader Martinelli from the next presidential election. The electoral tribunal disqualified Ricardo Martinelli, saying he was ineligible to run because of his conviction for money laundering and sentencing to more than five years in prison.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 March 2024

• Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, suspends the state-run leftist news agency for engaging in "propaganda"
  - Zero Hedge, 04 March 2024

• Republicans in the USA cheer as a hero of theirs, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, tramples the rule of law in his country.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 04 March 2024

• The world's second largest lithium producer, Sociedad Química y Minera, is boosting production and capacity expansions instead of scaling back plans as most of the other lithium miners do, despite the glut
  - OilPrice.com, 03 March 2024

• Why some people in Colombia call their mothers "your mercy". Two centuries after independence from Spain, many Colombians still use "sumercé", meaning "your mercy/grace", as an everyday address - kind of in the middle beween the formal "usted" and casual "tu".
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 March 2024

• Court rulings give states new power to protect groundwater. In the space of a few weeks, judges in Idaho, Nevada and Montana have altered the landscape for conserving dwindling aquifers.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 March 2024

• Femicides in Argentina, already at a record level last year, have increased further in the first two months of 2024, with more than one killing per day underscoring the deadly threat to women.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 01 March 2024

• $661,000,000 - Geneva-based commodities trading firm Gunvor said Friday that it has reached a $661 million settlement with U.S. and Swiss prosecutors after convictions for bribery of foreign officials in connection with the petroleum industry in Ecuador. The Swiss prosecutors said the case involved payouts to that led the state petroleum company Petroecuador to award two oil-related contracts to Gunvor.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 March 2024

• The main airport of Colombia, in Bogota, has become a hub for migrants heading to the U.S. in greater numbers. Some have been stranded for weeks, or forcibly turned back. Many are trying to fly to Nicaragua, which doesn't require an entry visa.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 March 2024

• New York state sues JBS, the beef giant based in Brazil, over its climate claims. The lawsuit says the meatpacking company has made a series of misleading statements about its environmental efforts.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 March 2024

• Migration across the Darién gap is halted after Colombia arrests bost captains. Boat operators suspended migrant crossings after Colombia arrested two captains. The Biden administration has asked Colombia to do more to stem the flow of people bound for the border of the USA.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 February 2024

• $150,000,000 - The secretary general of the foreign ministry of Colombia is fired by the president, after illegally awarding a $150 million contract to print passports to Thomas Greg & Sons, a passport printer that is a subsidiary of the UK-based De La Rue
  - Colombia Reports, 28 February 2024

• Chevron's $53 billion deal with Hess is in jeopardy as Exxon prepares a counteroffer. Exxon has said it could pre-emptively match the price Chevron offered Hess for its 30% stake in a booming oil prospect off the coast of Guyana.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 February 2024

• Chevron's $53 billion deal with Hess is in jeopardy as Exxon prepares a counteroffer. Exxon has said it could pre-emptively match the price Chevron offered Hess for its 30% stake in a booming oil prospect off the coast of Guyana.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 February 2024

• Investments by Zhōngguó in Latin America are being reduced in size to smaller, more strategic projects. Developments now seen to come from sectors like electric vehicles, which have faster returns and fewer operating costs.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 22 February 2024

• In Latin America, prison guards do not control prisons, the gangs do. Intended to fight crime, Latin American prisons have instead become safe havens and recruitment centers for gangs, fueling a surge in violence.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 February 2024

• A day after a New York court ruling that the laws of Venezuela would determine the validity of bonds issued by state-run PDVSA oil company, Bloomberg reports that bonds have "collapsed", slumping on questions over their validity. At stake is $2 billion in PDVSA bonds, and PDVSA notes dropped 17 cents following the ruling on Teusday, according to Bloomberg.
  - OilPrice.com, 21 February 2024

• This centuries-old border dispute pits an army against unarmed volunteers. Some people in Guatemalan call Belize their 23rd state. The territorial claim is creating jitters in one of the most lawless corners of Central America.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 February 2024

• In extraordinary move, Venezuela expels representatives of the UN's Human Rights Agency. The agency has 72 hours to leave the country, marking a "dramatic hardening" of conditions inside Venezuela.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 February 2024

• The harshly punitive abortion laws of El Salvador. The penalties are severe: abortion is punished with two to eight years in prison, but it is often classified as "aggravated homicide", which carries sentences of 30 to 50 years in prison.
  - Tico Times, 16 February 2024

• In Venezuela, you are a critic one day, and arrested the next. The detention of Rocío San Miguel, and her disappearance for many days, has Venezuelan human right activists concerned that they have entered a new era of repression.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 February 2024

• Extreme flooding and droughts may be the new norm for the Amazon, challenging its people and ecosystems
  - Science, 15 February 2024

• Ecuador follows El Salvador in arresting gangs and retaking prisons. Homicides fall 70% as President Daniel Noboa deploys troops on the streets and in prisons, emulating the crackdowns in El Salvador.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 12 February 2024

• The government of Venezuela tries some blackmail, announcing that it will refuse to accept deported migrants if the U.S. reimposes oil and gas sanctions. Venezuela is feeling the heat from the international community to hold a free and fair election this year. One reason it is also saber-rattling on the Guyanese border.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 12 February 2024

• The billionaire Erik Prince, a weapons trafficker, calls for the USA to colonize Africa and Latin America in a new wave of imperialism
  - The Intercept, 10 February 2024

• The 'banana' republic of Venezuela is moving light tanks, missile-equipped patrol boats and armored carriers to the border with Guyana, the most serious escalation in the conflict of the two oil rich nations, putting Biden in a very unpleasant position.
  - Zero Hedge, 09 February 2024

• The 'banana' republic of Venezuela is moving light tanks, missile-equipped patrol boats and armored carriers to the border with Guyana, the most serious escalation in the conflict of the two oil rich nations, putting Biden in a very unpleasant position.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 09 February 2024

• Water level projections threaten future Panama Canal transits
  - Freight Waves, 08 February 2024

• Terrorized by gangs, Ecuador embraces the authoritarian policies of the 'Noboa Way'. President Daniel Noboa's new war on gangs has widespread support in a nation overwhelmed by violence. But experts warn it could endanger civil liberties, similar to what is happening in El Salvador.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 February 2024

• Wildfires threaten two cities in Chile, destroying 1,000 homes and killing dozens. The death toll is expected to rise as hundreds have been reported missing in the blazes near the cities of Viña del Mar and Valparaíso, an area home to more than a million people.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 February 2024

• $19,200,000 - A supreme court of Panama upholds a penalty of 128 months in prison, and a fine of $19.2 million, imposed on former president Martinelli for money laundering
  - Newsroom Panama, 02 February 2024

• In Peru, a mission to save the stingless bee. Native to the tropics, these pollinators are taking a lead role in one of the latest efforts to conserve the Amazon rainforest.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 30 January 2024

• Costa Rica has recently enacted a progressive legal change, allowing people over 18 years of age to modify the order of their last names. This groundbreaking reform eliminates the long-standing obligation to prioritize the last name of the father, offering individuals the autonomy to choose their preferred sequence.
  - Tico Times, 29 January 2024

• President Biden will renew oil sanctions on Venezuelas if President Maduro continues barring opposition presidential candidate backed by the USA
  - Zero Hedge, 29 January 2024

• Colombia, a usually wet nation, reels amid widespread wildfires. Firefighters, many of them volunteers, have been confronting dozens of blazes amid high temperatures this month. The conditions have been linked to climate change.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 January 2024

• Wildfires rage near the capital of Colombia as temperatures soar. Forest fires have destroyed more than 17,000 hectares, with blazes burning kilometres from residential areas in Bogota.
  - Al Jazeera, 27 January 2024

• President Biden's 'oil-for-fake democracy' deal is ruined after Venezuela blocks the leader of the opposition from running for president in the next elections
  - Zero Hedge, 27 January 2024

• The first avowedly left-wing president of Colombia is mired in scandal. Gustavo Petro's son, brother, and former chief of staff are all under investigation.
  - Economist, 25 January 2024

• Global heating is threatening the coffee supply of the world. By the end of the century between 35% and 75% of the coffee-growing land in Brazil, the biggest producer of coffee in the world, could be unusable.
  - Economist, 25 January 2024

• Prison overcrowding soars in Latin America. Five countries on the continent have a prison population more than twice the capacity of their prisons: Peru (229 percent occupancy), El Salvador (237 percent), Bolivia (264 percent), Guatemala (293 percent), and Haiti, where the prison population is almost five times its official capacity.
  - Zero Hedge, 19 January 2024

• Cayalá, a gated cited for the corrupt rich of Guatemala (located on the edge of the capital, Gautemala City. The development of Cayalá is utopian, serene and prizewinning. As an elite stronghold in one of Latin America's most unequal nations, controlled by a small number of extremely rich families, it is also divisive.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 January 2024

• Plunging fertility rates are creating problems for Latin America. Rapidly ageing societies will struggle to afford pensions and health care. The fertility rate in Latin America fell below the 2.1 births per woman required to maintain a stable population in 2016.
  - Economist, 18 January 2024

• Bernardo Arévalo is sworn in as the new president of Guatemala. Elected as an anti-corruption crusader, racist Christian conservative lawmakers controlled by the rich families that control Guatemala, delayed the transfer of power.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 January 2024

• 60% of the global economy is in for a 'lost decade' due to record debt and high interest rates. Developing countries will have a hard time breaking the vicious cycle of debt and poverty, World Bank economists warn.
  - Zero Hedge, 12 January 2024

• The Lucayans, the first inhabitants of the Bahamas, and the first race of native Americans genocided by Spanish colonizers in the 1530s
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 January 2024

• The utter corruption of the rich elite of Guatemala, one of the most predatory in Central America. In Guatemala, with a high concentration of fertile land in few hands, the most powerful families, like the Castillos, the Bosches, the Novellas, or the Herreras, own sugar mills, coffee plantations, breweries, real estate, and banking businesses. And politicians.
  - Tico Times, 11 January 2024

• Ecuador plunges into crisis amid prison riots and the disappearance of the leader of a drug trafficking gang, in a country awash in gang violence fueled by a flourishing drug trade
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 January 2024

• A lithium deal in Chile is good news for electric vehicles. A public-private partnership between local miner SQM and U.S.-based Albemarle will extend production of the mineral used for EV batteries.
  - Murdoch's Barron's, 06 January 2024

• The private sector experiment in socialist Cuba is faltering, mostly because it is not bold enough by not giving enough freedom to the private sector. THey are still too many old guys, colleagues of Castro, resisting changes to their failed system.
  - Economist, 03 January 2024