US-Mexico border, migrants, repression and Mercosur are the key issues of this week in Latin America

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Problems at the U.S.-Mexico border, Venezuelan refugees and displaced persons, the identity of Mercosur, the political abyss in Nicaragua, and the rise of the left in Latin America are some of the week’s news focuses in the Americas.

1.- Mayorkas crosses the Rio Grande River

The U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, discusses this Monday and Tuesday with Mexican authorities the possible reopening of the common border, closed for more than a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The border issue, which was already addressed by Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador last week during the visit of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, is one of Mexico’s main concerns.

The closure of non-essential ground travel from March 2020 has had, in the words of the Mexican Foreign Ministry, “a huge impact.”

The visit by Mayorkas, the first Latino appointed to the post, deepens the new collaborative mood of Democrat Joe Biden’s Administration with its large southern neighbor.

2.-Remembering refugees

Next Sunday, June 20, is World Refugee Day, a date that highlights the rights and needs of refugee and displaced populations. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), in the Americas, there are more than seven million people in this situation, which includes major displacements in Central America and historic migrations such as that of Venezuelans.

Last week, the head of UNHCR’s Regional Office for South America, Juan Carlos Murillo, warned that the arrival of the southern winter increases the difficulties of the almost two million Venezuelan refugees in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, and Paraguay, countries that are among the most affected by the pandemic.

In light of this alert, on Thursday, Canada will host the next International Donors’ Conference in Solidarity with Venezuelan refugees and migrants.

3. Mercosur Crossroads

The foreign minister meeting is on Tuesday, June 15, in Buenos Aires, and each country has already laid its cards on the table. The chancellors of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) meet in the Argentine capital to try to make progress in economic integration, but differences remain wide. The countries that make up the organization (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay) currently disagree on two essential points.

Argentina has so far refused to make Mercosur’s external negotiation mechanism more flexible, i.e., to allow members of the bloc to negotiate individually with other countries, as proposed by Brazil and Uruguay.

On the other hand, the Common External Tariff (CET) is a maximum of 35%, but the average applied is 12%, compared to a global average of 5.5%. Both Uruguay and Brazil are promoting a substantial and broad tariff reduction. Still, Argentina presented a proposal in April for more moderate and selective reductions that do not affect domestic manufactures.

4. Growing chasm in Nicaragua

Repeated calls from the international community to stop political repression in Nicaragua have only served to increase the number of arrests of the opposition by Daniel Ortega’s regime. Just this Sunday, the Nicaraguan Police announced the arrests of former Sandinista guerrillas Dora María Téllez and Hugo Torres and opposition members Ana Margarita Vigil and Suyen Barahona on charges of “inciting foreign interference in internal affairs”.

Early this morning, it was also learned that former Nicaraguan vice-chancellor Víctor Hugo Tinoco was arrested under the accusation of “inciting foreign interference in internal affairs” and “calling for military interventions” against the government of Daniel Ortega,

In addition to these actions, four presidential aspirants of the opposition are under arrest: Cristiana Chamorro, Arturo Cruz, Félix Maradiaga and Juan Sebastián Chamorro García. These arrests come five months before the Nicaraguan elections, in which Ortega is seeking yet another reelection.

Sergio Ramirez, 2018 Cervantes Prize winner and historical figure in the struggle against Somoza, this week defined the current situation in his country in a few words: “The rule of law ceased to exist in Nicaragua. The rest is fiction and imitation. And meanwhile, the abyss widens at our feet.”

5. To the left

Except in Ecuador, where the center-right leader Guillermo Lasso won against all odds, elections in the last twelve months in the Americas have produced majorities among left-wing forces. The latest experience was this Sunday in Chile, where the results of the regional elections show that the center-left won the capital city and 9 of the 16 governorships in the country, thus becoming the big winner of these elections.

One week after the presidential elections in Peru, leftist Pedro Castillo is the most voted candidate with an advantage of 49,420 votes over rightist Keiko Fujimori. This week, the requests for the annulment of the electoral records, mostly pushed by Fujimori, have to be defined after she denounced that “table fraud” has been committed during the ballot.

If the balance falls in Castillo’s favor, the map of the region will once again be tinged pink/red while awaiting the fall electoral calendar, where Chile, Argentina, Honduras, and Nicaragua are scheduled to go to the polls.

Source: efe