Argentina Bonds Are Still A Good Investment

Emerging Markets International Trader Argentina’s Economy Stumbles. Its Bonds Are Still Attractive. By Craig Mellow Follow Oct 01, 2026, 3:00 am EDT Gift Article Listen (4 min) President of Argentina Javier Milei addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month. (Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images) Key Points About This Summary Argentine President Javier Milei is losing momentum a year before his re-election bid, with his approval rating dropping. Argentina’s annual inflation rate is stuck around 30%, poverty is increasing, real wages are stagnant and unemployment is rising. Despite the economic challenges, some investment managers view Argentine bonds as potentially attractive due to the country’s fiscal situation. Argentine President Javier Milei is losing momentum a year before his bid for re-election. Luckily for him and bondholders, his Peronist opponents are stuck in reverse. The libertarian firebrand, in office since December 2023, achieved global celebrity as his shock therapy whipped near-hyperinflation and doubled currency reserves in the world’s most-defaulting nation. But he has largely squandered a political boost he got from successful 2025 midterm elections. Advertisement - Scroll to Continue At home, Milei’s drawn-out defense of cabinet chief Manuel Adorni against corruption allegations left vital structural reforms of taxation and pensions to languish. “The Adorni scandal consumed way too much oxygen,” says Bruno Binetti, a fellow at Chatham House. Adorni stepped down in late June. Abroad, Milei’s administration whiffed on a chance to re-enter bond markets before the summer surge in global yields. “If they didn’t want to issue at 9%, they won’t come to market now at 11%,” says Jeff Grills, head of emerging markets debt at Aegon Asset Management. That has left the economy to drift in the wrong direction for most of Argentina’s 46 million citizens. Inflation is stuck around a still-punishing 30% annual rate. Poverty is increasing again after a sharp contraction in Milei’s first two years. This year’s 2% to 3% economic growth is concentrated where jobs aren’t, in oil and mining exploration and agriculture. “Real wages are stagnant and unemployment is rising,” summarizes Thierry Larose, portfolio manager for emerging markets local debt at Vontobel Asset Management. Milei’s poll numbers have dropped accordingly, with voters disapproving of his stewardship by a 60-to-40 margin, according to pollster AtlasIntel. So have bond prices. Benchmark paper maturing in 2038 has fallen from 83 cents on the dollar to 74 cents over the past two months. Advertisement - Scroll to Continue Argentines may well see the alternative as worse when they cast ballots in October 2027, though. Peronism’s leading lights, former President Cristina Kirchner and Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof, have feuded with each other and rehashed the disastrous policy prescriptions that ushered Milei into power. “The Peronists are very nostalgic about a golden age that disappeared more than 15 years ago,” Binetti says. “With the information we have today, continuity is more likely than change” next year, says Alejo Czerwonko, chief investment officer for emerging markets at UBS Global Wealth Management. On that assumption, Argentine bonds are a buy. “They are trading at a steep premium over other B-rated credits despite one of healthiest fiscal situations on the planet,” Czerwonko argues. Aegon’s Grills is a tad more cautious, seeing Argentine credit as “not too far from an entry point.” Yields are near, if not at the top of, the emerging market charts, paying a percentage point more than neighboring Ecuador and nearly as much as Gabon, he notes. Vontobel’s Larose considers “the outlook for Argentine bonds as challenging but potentially attractive.” Advertisement - Scroll to Continue Stagnation might get incumbents thrown out in other countries. In Argentina, it is something of an achievement compared with past chaos and contraction. “Milei is delivering a modicum of stability in the ultimate boom-and-bust economy,” Czerwonko says. He has powerful friends to buttress that stability if necessary, at the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury, which opened a $20 billion credit line to Buenos Aires to fortify the peso before last year’s midterms. Milei’s reforms could still fail, like those of Mauricio Macri before him. But investors may be getting paid adequately for that risk. Write to editors@barrons.com

Bolivia Arrests Attorney General Over Alleged Drug Ties

Bolivia Arrests Attorney General Over Alleged Drug Ties After US Pressure BOLIVIA Bolivia Bolivian police arrested Attorney General Roger Mariaca this week, days after the United States blacklisted him and more than a dozen other officials over alleged ties to drug trafficking cartels. He was arrested Wednesday, with local media reporting that police detained him at Viru Viru International Airport in Santa Cruz. Police also arrested Santa Cruz prosecutor Alberto Zeballos. He and Mariaca were among nearly 20 people from Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador whom the US State Department accused this week of corruption, links to drug trafficking or conspiring against their governments. The State Department said Monday that Mariaca received “bribes to facilitate drug trafficking” and help violent criminals evade justice. Washington revoked the visas of 12 Bolivian officials and made nine other Bolivian nationals who did not have visas ineligible to receive them. Mariaca denied the accusations Monday, describing Washington’s decision as an act of “interference” and “political pressure” in response to his investigations. The Office of the Attorney General also denounced Wednesday’s police action as illegal. The crackdown comes months after notorious Latin American drug trafficker Sebastián Marset, who had eluded police for years, was arrested in Bolivia and handed over to US authorities earlier this year.

Banking Scandal and US Pressure Campaign Roil Brasil's Tight Presidential Race

Banking Scandal and US Pressure Campaign Roil Brazil’s Tight Presidential Race BRAZIL Brazil A month ago, crime and cost of living – along with foreign interference – were the top issues for Brazilian voters ahead of the presidential election on Oct. 4. But that was before the eruption of a sprawling banking scandal implicating the son of the last president, Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, who is vying to unseat incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) in an extremely tight race. Now, corruption has become a major issue in the vote. “Brazil’s voters hate it,” wrote the Economist. “As the scandal unfurls, corruption has become their primary concern.” On Sept. 11, court documents were unsealed that showed Flávio Bolsonaro is ​under investigation for alleged corruption and money laundering tied to now-defunct lender Banco Master. The case has also implicated other politicians and a justice from the country’s highest court. The allegations against Flávio Bolsonaro center on his role in securing at least $12 million from banker Daniel Vorcaro to finance “Dark Horse,” a sympathetic film about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, who has faced multiple corruption allegations and is serving a 27-year prison sentence for plotting to remain in power after losing the 2022 election to Lula. Vorcaro is the former owner of Banco Master, which was shut down last year over a multibillion-dollar fraud case involving fake loans that cost Brazil’s deposit insurance system billions. Meanwhile, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes is accused of feeding Vorcaro information about the investigation. Flávio Bolsonaro and Moraes deny wrongdoing. The turmoil comes as Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro are locked in an exceptionally tight race, with the 11 other candidates trailing far behind. Lula, 80, is seeking a fourth nonconsecutive term. A poll released Sept. 23 put Lula’s share of the vote at 45.8 percent and Flávio Bolsonaro at 43.4 percent in the first round, while they were statistically tied in a hypothetical Oct. 25 runoff, required if no candidate wins a majority. Flávio Bolsonaro’s share of the vote has not dropped since the banking scandal unfurled, polls show. However, some voters like Laiza Sousa, a 22-year-old grocery store worker from the northeastern state of Bahia, say corruption has now become their main issue and see little to like in either candidate. “Neither of them brings anything to Brazil. Flávio … he's from [Jair] Bolsonaro's inner circle,” she told Brazil’s Folha de S.Paulo newspaper. “I haven't seen them improve Brazil, things only get worse.” The case has shaken the race even as voters also worry about violent crime and foreign involvement in the election: US tariffs and sanctions have intensified scrutiny of Washington’s role in an already volatile campaign. Despite a declining national homicide rate, violence remains a top concern for Brazilians, while powerful criminal organizations increasingly control territory and economic activity. In May, Flávio Bolsonaro urged the Trump administration to designate Brazil’s two largest criminal groups as terrorist organizations, a step Washington later took, which Lula opposed as foreign interference. “The main driver of this decision was politics, to pressure Lula and help Flávio prior to the October election,” Latin America analyst Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of US publication Americas Quarterly, told the Washington Post. US tariffs have further drawn Washington into the campaign since Trump imposed new duties on Brazilian goods in July. Flávio Bolsonaro, whose family has close ties to US President Donald Trump, lobbied Washington to postpone them until after the election, arguing the timing could benefit his rival. Lula’s approval rose to its highest level last year after an earlier Trump tariff hike raised duties on Brazilian goods to 50 percent and sanctioned de Moraes at the urging of another Bolsonaro son, Eduardo, a former lawmaker convicted of coercion and sentenced to four years in prison who was granted asylum in the US last year. “What is certain is that the issue of sovereignty and tariffs will be in the campaign,” Cila Schulman, CEO of Brazilian pollster Ideia, told Brazilian business publication Exame. “Foreign policy is (usually) never an issue in Brazilian elections. This time, we will see the relationship with the United States in the debate through the economy.” Lula has increasingly presented US pressure as a challenge to Brazilian sovereignty, while Flávio Bolsonaro’s ties to Trump have become part of broader public concern about foreign involvement, New York University political scientist Patricio Navia told Al Jazeera: “Even right-wing Brazilians, when they see President Trump trying to meddle with Brazilian elections, are not very pleased, because they think that Brazilian problems should be solved in Brazil, not in Washington, DC.”

Hidden Paths In Peru

Hidden Paths Polish and Peruvian archaeologists recently discovered more than 1.5 miles of previously unknown roads beneath the dense forests surrounding Machu Picchu, providing new clues as to how people may have moved through the mountainous landscape around the famous Inca citadel. The archaeological team uncovered the pre-Hispanic routes on the slopes of Mount Yanantin, at altitudes of around 6,500 to 8,860 feet, an area thick with tropical vegetation that has made conventional archaeological surveys difficult. The findings follow preliminary reconnaissance carried out in July 2023 around the Mandor wall, east of Machu Picchu, within the Machu Picchu National Archaeological Park. To see through the dense canopy, researchers turned to Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). The technology fires laser pulses from a drone toward the ground, allowing scientists to digitally strip away vegetation and build a detailed 3D model of the terrain underneath. The scans exposed narrow, zigzagging paths hidden by the cloud forest, alongside possible agricultural terraces, platforms and circular structures. The longest clearly identified stretch of road runs for at least 0.7 miles and displays features associated with Inca construction techniques, according to Heritage Daily. Although archaeologists have not yet conclusively determined the age of the roads, the discovery could reshape researchers' understanding of the wider landscape surrounding Machu Picchu. More than 60 archaeological sites around the citadel are already linked by roads, but most known sites are located on the same side of the Urubamba River. The newly detected routes suggest substantial activity also took place across the river. “The roads we have discovered alter this picture – it turns out that the other side of the river also underwent significant cultural transformations during the Inca period,” Mariusz Ziółkowski, director of the Center for Andean Studies at the University of Warsaw, said in a statement. Machu Picchu – built high in the Peruvian Andes and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site – has undergone more than a century of archaeological investigation. Yet its surrounding forests continue to conceal evidence of a much broader network of human activity. Ziółkowski and his colleagues are planning additional LiDAR surveys and possible excavations to determine when the roads were built and whether they formed part of the wider Inca Road system. “This discovery complements and significantly revises hypotheses regarding the functioning of the entire complex,” he said.

Deep Political Unrest in Venezuela

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcIy7x-kW-A

Concerns Rise Over Venezuela Oil Deal

Black Gold Dreams and Nightmares: Concerns Rise Over the US-Venezuelan Oil Deal VENEZUELA Venezuela From the US to Russia, and almost everywhere in between, drivers around the world are feeling tremendous pain at the fuel pump. The US, however, has a plan to help American drivers: use Venezuela’s oil. More than nine months after American troops seized former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who is now in New York facing federal charges that include narco-terrorism and drug trafficking, officials in both countries recently released details about how the US plans to acquire as much as a quarter of Venezuela’s oil. Citing Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, the Associated Press described how the US government and Barbados-based North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), the biggest private oil company operating in Venezuela, formed a joint venture with rights to drill for oil in the South American country for a century. The expectation is that the joint venture will tap 65 billion barrels of crude that will require $100 billion of investment into Venezuelan infrastructure and generate $209 billion in tax revenues for the country. The US Department of Defense will own 35 percent of the joint venture. The US State Department will have the right to purchase 20 percent of its output at cost. On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump “reveled” in the new US access to Venezuela’s oil fields while addressing the UN General Assembly in New York. “It’s perhaps the biggest deal ever made,” he told the audience. “To the victor belong the spoils.” However, the deal has been strongly criticized by some US officials, Venezuelans and others who echoed World Politics Review when it wrote that it “does not pass the sniff test.” One major concern is the involvement of Venezuelan oligarch Alejandro Betancourt, who controls NABEP and who is a close ally of Rodríguez: He owes his fortune in part to no-bid contracts his companies were awarded under former President Hugo Chávez; he has been investigated for money laundering in Switzerland and Spain and was arrested twice in the United Kingdom last year on warrants related to those charges. The US has pressured Switzerland to drop its case and the UK to release Betancourt. He has not yet been charged with a crime. However, observers say Betancourt is extremely controversial in Venezuela, not least because it was his company that was awarded a no-bid contract under Chávez to upgrade state electricity power plants. Venezuela suffers from blackouts to this day. Then there are the worries over the echoes of “imperialism,” as French newspaper Le Monde labelled the deal. What right, they asked, does the US have to abscond with Venezuelan oil, even if the deal benefits ordinary Venezuelans – a big “if” given the rampant corruption and the country’s broken economy? “Nothing about this deal, closer to an ultimatum than a real compromise, rings right,” it wrote. “It represents a predatory move reminiscent of the worst eras of colonial empires, imposed on the land of Bolivarian ideals, which once championed mutual respect between nations.” Meanwhile, free-marketeers at the conservative Cato Institute worried about the lack of transparency, the lack of legitimacy, and the expansion of state corporatism with the US government getting involved directly in the oil business after years of American leaders criticizing meddling socialist governments like Venezuela’s. “This isn’t even ‘creeping’ socialism anymore,” they said, adding that the legality of the deal with an unelected leadership and one not approved by the legislature was in doubt. Regardless, after announcing his intentions to strike the deal months ago, Trump said the deal would unleash a massive wave of foreign investment into Venezuela. So far, observers say he’s right. Continental Resources recently announced a plan with state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) to develop and operate a 126,000-acre patch in the Orinoco Belt, an oil region in the country’s center. Exxon is also preparing to make a big investment to start pumping black gold even though the CEO of ExxonMobil told Trump at a White House meeting earlier this year that Venezuela remains “uninvestable.” Such a move would be a “staggering reversal” for Exxon, Reuters noted: The company left Venezuela after Chávez, a socialist, nationalized its facilities, sued the country and is still owed billions in damages for the expropriation. Regardless, if and when the joint venture starts shipping crude, it will likely be years before that oil helps oil consumers abroad, wrote PolitiFact. The Venezuelan oil industry is decrepit after decades of mismanagement and corruption under the Chávez and Maduro administrations and will take years to upgrade. Armed groups control some areas that are necessary to access in order to drill for oil. Between then and now, a new US administration could scuttle the deal – or the Venezuelans could, if they shrug off their dictatorship in the future. Already, the Venezuelan opposition, which was not party to the deal, has reacted angrily to the agreement, which it sees as theft of national resources. The public is just as dismayed – with 87 percent opposed according to recent polling. Now, the opposition, observers and analysts also worry that the deal will disincentivize any push to restore democracy despite progress that was made in August with the first talks between the government and the opposition, a “National Dialogue” that is supposed to lead to reconciliation and a restoration of democracy. However, such an outcome would likely threaten the arrangement for Rodríguez and the US, analysts say. US officials counter that the deal is key to getting Venezuela’s destroyed economy back on track before any election is held. They say it’s necessary to give democracy a solid foundation. But Venezuelans, many of whom supported the US action to capture Maduro, aren’t buying that, as one Venezuelan told the Economist: “This is all being done behind the people’s back by people who are illegitimately in power.”

The Letelier-Moffit Case At 50: The Verdict of History on Pinochet's Role

The Letelier-Moffitt Case at 50: The Verdict of History on Pinochet’s Role Letelier Moffitt National Security Archive Publishes New FBI Records on “CHILBOM” Investigation into Car Bombing that Killed Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt FBI Agents Interviewed Henry Kissinger on Pinochet’s Role Secretary of State George Shultz Raised Issue of Indicting Pinochet in 1987; Attorney General Janet Reno Authorized “Major” Investigation in 1999 Published: Sep 21, 2026 Briefing Book # 930 Edited by Peter Kornbluh and For more information, contact: 202-994-7000 or peter.kornbluh@gmail.com Subjects Human Rights and Genocide Secrecy and FOIA Terrorism and Counterterrorism Regions South America Events Chile – Coup d’État, 1973 Project Chile BOOKS assassination on embassy row book cover Assassination on Embassy Row by John Dinges book The Pinochet File by Peter Kornbluh, The New Press, Updated edition (September 11, 2013) book cover Pinochet desclasificado by Peter Kornbluh, Un Dia en La Vida/Editorial Catalonia (August, 2023) The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents by John Dinges, The New Press (August 1, 2012) Los Anos del Condor book cover Los años del Cóndor (Spanish Edition) by John Dinges, DEBATE (June 1, 2021) Washington, D.C., September 21, 2026 - As part of a “major case” investigation into the role of General Augusto Pinochet in an act of terrorism in Washington, D.C., the FBI interviewed former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, according to declassified FBI documents posted today by the National Security Archive. In a meeting with FBI agents on May 25, 2000, in New York, Kissinger related a private meeting he had with General Pinochet in Santiago, Chile, just three months before the assassination, according to a newly disclosed FBI summary of the interview. “Kissinger recalled Pinochet bringing up Orlando Letelier’s name when he referenced contact which was being made by Christian Democrats and opponents to the Pinochet regime with members of the US congress. Kissinger could not recall if Pinochet became angry when speaking of Orlando Letelier.” The Archive’s posting marks the 50th anniversary of the car bombing that killed former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier, and his young colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, in Washington, D.C. The FBI documents were obtained pursuant to Freedom of Information Act requests filed more than a decade ago by the Archive’s Chile Documentation Project. Codenamed “CHILBOM,” the renewed FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation was authorized by Attorney General Janet Reno on February 8, 1999, several months after General Pinochet was detained in London on an Interpol warrant filed by Spain under the European Anti-Terrorism Convention. “The objective of the renewed investigation is to determine whether sufficient admissible, credible evidence, exists to establish that one or more additional persons, up to and including General Augusto Pinochet was involved in the [Letelier and Moffitt] homicides,” states one FBI overview of the investigation, posted today. “There are still unsolved aspects of the case,” states another FBI report dated March 27, 2000. “The intellectual authors of the crime are still being sought, and this may lead to the highest levels of the former Chilean government, which at the time of the bombing was led by General Augusto Pinochet.” Pinochet’s Role Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt were killed the morning of September 21, 1976, when a bomb planted under the chassis of Letelier’s car exploded as they drove to work along a stretch of Massachusetts Avenue known as Embassy Row. Letelier had served as President Salvador Allende’s ambassador to Washington and minister of defense before the coup and was widely recognized as the most distinguished international voice of opposition to the Pinochet regime. Ronni Moffitt, 25 years old, was a fundraiser at the Institute for Policy Studies, where they both worked. Her husband, Michael Moffitt, Letelier’s research assistant, was the sole survivor of the bombing. Bombed Car Within seven days of the car bombing, the FBI attaché in Buenos Aires, Robert Scherrer, developed a concrete lead from an Argentine intelligence source—the existence of Operation Condor, a collaboration between Southern Cone secret police agencies to track and eliminate their opponents in the region and around the world. “Chile is the center for ‘Operation Condor,’” Scherrer reported in his September 28, 1976, intelligence cable. “It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the recent assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C. may have been carried out as a third phase action of ‘Operation Condor.’” For almost twenty years, this secret Condor cable was the only publicly available document trying Chile to the Letelier assassination. It was first obtained and cited by investigative journalist John Dinges, who co-authored with Saul Landau the first book on the Letelier-Moffitt case: Assassination on Embassy Row. Despite this early intelligence, it took almost two years for the FBI to concretely identify the Chilean secret police, DINA, as responsible for the car bombing. A break in the investigation came after photographs of two Chilean operatives who, under the Condor collaboration, had sought false visas in Paraguay for a mission to the United States in August 1976, were published on the front page of a Washington, D.C., newspaper. Within hours, the two were identified as DINA agents: American-born Michael Townley and Major Armando Fernandez Larios. The Carter administration demanded that Townley, a U.S. citizen, be transferred into U.S. custody. After months of delay and obfuscation, the Pinochet regime finally turned him over to the FBI, but only after U.S. authorities agreed not to question him about DINA operations other than the Letelier mission. Based on Townley’s detailed confessions on DINA’s responsibility for the car bombing, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted DINA director Col. Manuel Contreras and his deputy, Pedro Espinoza, along with Armando Fernandez Larios. The U.S. filed formal requests to Chile that they be extradited to the United States to stand trial, generating what one member of Pinochet’s military junta called “a Chilean Watergate.” At that point, General Pinochet spearheaded a major cover up of his and DINA’s role in the car bombing, according to detailed CIA intelligence reports. Pinochet planned to “stonewall” any investigation, the CIA station in Santiago advised in June 1978, using the following strategy: “A. Protect General (r) Manuel Contreras from successful prosecution; B. Stonewall any further requests from the U.S. Government; C. Continue to ‘lobby’ the [Chilean] Supreme Court justices to ensure that requests for extradition of Chilean citizens following anticipated indictments are rejected. D. Continue to exploit Chilean nationalism with a covert action campaign to portray the Letelier investigation as being politically motivated -- another pretext for destabilizing the Pinochet regime.” The CIA also reported that Contreras “admitted his culpability” for the crime to the official Chilean military investigator, but “threatened to claim he was acting on orders from Pinochet in the event he was prosecuted.” According to CIA sources, Contreras “claimed he had safely secreted documentation to support his claim. This blackmail threat worked,” the CIA station reported. “Thus, the coverup began.” The Fernandez Larios Defection This document and other intelligence the CIA gathered on Pinochet’s role remained secret for decades, effectively permitting successive U.S. administrations to evade public pressure to prosecute General Pinochet.But international attention to Pinochet’s criminality as the intellectual author of the Letelier-Moffitt assassination was revived by the defection, in early 1987, of one of the original DINA operatives in the case—Armando Fernandez Larios. In October 1986, U.S. authorities reached out to Fernandez Larios in Chile, using a backchannel intermediary, to offer him a deal: sanctuary in the United States in return for full and honest testimony on the car bombing. A small team of U.S. officials secretly traveled to Santiago and debriefed Fernandez for ten hours in a CIA safe house on January 14, 1987. According to two detailed debriefing reports posted by the Archive today for the first time Fernandez Larios implicated Pinochet as responsible for ordering Letelier’s assassination and orchestrating a concerted cover-up of that crime. In face-to-face meetings with Pinochet in 1978, according to the debriefing papers, Fernandez Larios told Pinochet he was going to go to the U.S. and confess his role in the Letelier operation. “Pinochet was upset that Fernandez had developed this attitude,” according to the debriefing report. Pinochet “told him that he had to be a good soldier, to continue this struggle and this problem would have a happy end.” Twice, according to Fernandez Larios, he requested that Pinochet allow him to resign from the military; and twice Pinochet “refused to allow him to separate from the Army’s jurisdiction.” More importantly, Fernandez Larios related details he had heard and witnessed from DINA’s former deputy director, Pedro Espinoza. Espinoza related to him that DINA Director Manuel Contreras had admitted to the official military investigator in the Letelier case, Hector Orozco, that he had “given the order” to kill Letelier. “When asked why, he stated that he (Contreras) had received an order. When asked from whom, he advised Orozco to ‘ask the chief.’ Since Contreras reported directly to Pinochet the reference to the chief is reasonably clear.” This information became public on February 4, 1987, when Fernandez Larios appeared in the Washington District Court to plead guilty to “being an accessory after the fact” to the murder of Letelier. (He was sentenced to up to seven years in prison and released after only five months.) It was contained in a legal “proffer” of testimony Fernandez Larios provided as part of his plea-bargain agreement with the Justice Department. Although of low evidentiary value, the proffer generated news headlines around the world on Pinochet’s role in the terrorist attack, and became the catalyst, inside the Reagan administration, for a major effort to finally terminate U.S. support for his regime. Secretary of State George Shultz, a leading advocate of breaking Washington’s ties to the Pinochet dictatorship, used the Fernandez Larios evidence to lobby President Reagan to abandon the military regime and support a return to civilian rule. To obtain ammunition for this argument, Shultz requested that the CIA do a comprehensive file review of its raw intelligence on the Letelier-Moffitt assassination. On May 1, 1987, the CIA provided the secretary of state with what remains the most consequential declassified document of thousands of records on the Letelier Moffitt case—a secret report titled “Pinochet’s Role in the Letelier Assassination and Subsequent Coverup” (reposted today). secret memo “A review of our files on the Letelier assassination,” the CIA concluded, “has provided what we regard as convincing evidence that President Pinochet personally ordered his intelligence chief to carry out the murder.” The assessment added that Pinochet later “decided to stonewall on the case to hide his involvement…to protect his hold on the presidency.” Pinochet had even considered murdering Manual Contreras, the head of DINA, because he was the one man who could testify that Pinochet had ordered the assassination. Shultz then summarized the CIA’s conclusions in a forceful memorandum to President Reagan titled “Pinochet and the Letelier-Moffitt Murders: Implications for US Policy.” The car bombing was “a blatant example of a chief of state’s direct involvement in an act of state terrorism, one that is particularly disturbing both because it occurred in our capital and since his government is generally considered to be friendly,” Shultz argued. “What we now know about Pinochet’s role in this assassination is of the greatest seriousness and adds further impetus to the need to work toward complete democratization of Chile.” Indicting Pinochet? The Secretary of State also lofted the idea of indicting Pinochet as the mastermind of a terrorist attack on the streets of Washinton, D.C. “The CIA has never before drawn and presented its conclusion that such strong evidence exists of his leadership role in this act of terrorism,” Shultz advised Reagan. But “it is not clear whether we can or would want to consider indicting Pinochet, even if we had more public sources of evidence.” Pinochet At the time, the United States government took no steps to indict Pinochet; rather, U.S. policy focused on supporting a transition to democracy in Chile in 1990 and pressing the new civilian government in Chile to prosecute the top DINA officers, Manuel Contreras and his deputy, Pedro Espinoza. In high-profile legal proceedings in the early 1990s, they were both convicted and sentenced to seven and six years respectively in a luxury prison built especially to house them. Only after Pinochet was arrested in London on October 16, 1998, did the Clinton Administration—under pressure from the Letelier and Moffitt families and human rights advocates—revisit the idea of prosecuting Pinochet as the “intellectual author” of an act of terrorism in Washington, D.C. With Attorney General Reno’s February 1999 authorization for a “major” investigation, the Justice Department established a special “terrorism task force” to gather evidence on Pinochet’s role over the course of an 18-month investigation. In March/April 2000, a team of DOJ lawyers and FBI investigators spent close to a month in Chile deposing former military regime officials, among them former DINA director Manuel Contreras, who was officially interrogated at the Punto Peuco luxury prison. The declassified FBI summary of the Contreras deposition is almost entirely redacted. But one U.S. official who was there said that Contreras provided investigators with the regime’s cover story for the Letelier assassination—that the CIA was responsible for the car bombing. Pro-Pinochet reporters who Contreras had invited to the prison, then ambushed the task force team as they left, turning the deposition into a media propaganda opportunity to absolve the military regime of responsibility for the terrorist attack. Around August 2000, only a few months after Pinochet returned from over a year of house arrest in London, the DOJ lawyers investigating him presented Attorney General Reno with summaries of evidence and recommendations on indicting the former dictator. But Reno deferred action on prosecuting Pinochet to the incoming administration of George W. Bush, who assumed the presidency in January 2001. The Bush administration appears to have shelved the Pinochet investigation. “The Letelier case disappeared down a black hole,” one U.S. official told Chilean journalist Pascale Bonnefoy in 2002. Fifty years after the car bombing occurred on Embassy Row, none of the FBI evidentiary records or DOJ recommendations have been declassified. One December 2000 FBI memorandum identified “an investigative summary of the CHILBOM investigation” that was being filed. But that summary was withheld from declassification to the National Security Archive. On the 50th anniversary of the assassination, the Archive called on the Department of Justice to release all remaining records on the investigation and its conclusions. “The Letelier-Moffitt case remains the most infamous and emblematic atrocity of the many heinous human rights crimes committed by the Pinochet regime,” said Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Archive’s Chile Documentation Project. “The verdict of history on General Pinochet’s role as an international terrorist awaits the declassification of these final documents.” The Documents ebb930 doc1 Document 1 FBI, interview summary, [Formal FBI Interview with Henry Kissinger], May 25, 2000 May 25, 2000 Source National Security Archive Freedom of Information Act Request As part of the FBI/DOJ investigation into Pinochet’s role in the Letelier-Moffitt assassination, several FBI special attaches interviewed Henry Kissinger in his New York office on May 25, 2000. Kissinger told them he had met with General Pinochet in Santiago, Chile, only a few months before the assassination, accompanied by his top aide for Latin America, Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs William Rogers (whose name is redacted in the document). According to this summary of the conversation, “Kissinger recalled Pinochet bringing up Orlando Letelier’s name when he referenced contact which was being made by Christian Democrats and opponents to the Pinochet regime with members of the US congress. Kissinger could not recall if Pinochet became angry when speaking of Orlando Letelier.” ebb930 doc2 Document 2 FBI, status report, “CHILBOM Investigation: Overview/Update,” ca. May 2000 May 2000 Source National Security Archive Freedom of Information Act Request In this update report on the status of the CHILBOM investigation, the FBI provides details on Pinochet’s role. The three-page overview—in which the names of well-known Chilean DINA officials and operatives and their anti-Castro Cuban collaborators in the car-bomb operation are inexplicably redacted—provides a specific statement of mission: “In February 1999, Attorney General Janet Reno authorized the renewed investigation of the Letelier and Moffitt murders. The objective of the renewed investigation is to determine whether sufficient admissible, credible evidence, exists to establish that one or more additional persons, up to and including General Augusto Pinochet was involved in the homicides.” The report advises that agents have traveled to Chile and Argentina to review thousands of documents on the case, and that a special DOJ/FBI delegation spent a month in Chile—March 20-April 20, 2000— “taking sworn testimony from 38 of the 46 witnesses requested. Five of the 46 were found to be deceased,” the FBI reported, “and two are fugitives on unrelated matters.” ebb930 doc3 Document 3 FBI, [Request for Three Investigators to go to Chile to Conduct Inquiry], March 20, 2000 Mar 20, 2000 The FBI’s Terrorism Task Force prepares for a second extended investigative trip to Chile, as described in this report. The report cites the first trip, in January 2000, of FBI investigators who traveled to Santiago to undertake a “full file review” of archival documents. Now investigators will go to Chile to officially depose some 50 individuals who “were involved with the Pinochet Junta during 1973-1990.” The investigators will not be allowed to question the witnesses directly; that will be done by a Chilean lawyer, Alfredo Etcheberry, who represents the U.S. government. The FBI and DOJ officials will watch the proceedings via a closed-circuit TV set-up from an adjacent room in the courthouse. ebb930 doc4 Document 4 FBI, cable, [Request for Attorney General Approval to Interview Witnesses in Chile], Secret, March 27, 2000 Mar 27, 2000 Source National Security Archive FOIA Request This cable reports on the activities of a DOJ/FBI team that has arrived in Chile to formally investigate Pinochet’s role in the Letelier-Moffitt car bombing. The team has requested that the Chilean courts arrange for the depositions of 46 former aides to Pinochet and the former head of DINA, Gen. Manuel Contreras. “The assassination,” the cable states, “was a particularly notorious and vicious criminal act committed on U.S. soil.” “There are still unsolved aspects of the case,” the FBI investigator notes. “The intellectual authors of the crime are still being sought, and this may lead to the highest levels of the former Chilean government, which at the time of the bombing was led by General Augusto Pinochet.” ebb930 doc5 Document 5 FBI, summary, [Deposition of former DINA Director, Gen. Manuel Contreras], May 3, 2000 May 3, 2000 Source National Security Archive FOIA Request On April 10, 2000, the FBI/DOJ team of investigators deposed former DINA chieftain Manuel Contreras in Punto Peuco, the luxury prison that was built for him when he was first convicted for the assassination of Orlando Letelier in 1993. The entirety of Contreras’ testimony has been redacted. The day before the official interrogation, the FBI/DOJ investigators met with Contreras at the prison. According to one of the investigators, Contreras blamed the CIA for the assassination, advancing the cover story he and Pinochet had concocted in 1978—when DINA operatives were identified as responsible—that the CIA had planted the bomber, American-born DINA agent Michael Townley, inside the Chilean secret police to embarrass the Chilean regime. ebb930 doc6 Document 6 FBI, “Investigative summary on CHILBOM investigation,” December 11, 2000 Dec 11, 2000 Source National Security Archive FOIA Request Almost two years after the CHILBOM inquiry was authorized by Attorney General Janet Reno, and as the new Bush administration prepares to take office, the FBI files a copy of an “investigative summary” on the case. The summary, which presumably catalogues the evidence on Pinochet’s role, has been compiled at the Washington Field Office (WFO) of the FBI; but the name of the person, or agency, which compiled it is redacted. The summary remains secret fifty years after the Letelier-Moffitt car bombing. ebb930 doc7 Document 7 State Department, cable, [Highlights of Ten-Hour Debriefing with Fernandez Larios], Top Secret Eyes-Only Roger Channel, January 15, 1987 Jan 15, 1987 Source Obama Administration Special Declassification on Letelier Case In early January, a small U.S. team arrived in Chile to hold a secret debriefing session with Armando Fernandez Larios, pursuing a deal with him to provide evidence in the Letelier-Moffitt assassination. This cable summarizes the most important information he provided over the course of a ten-hour meeting. Fernandez Larios shared details of Pinochet’s effort to block him from going to the the United States to face charges in the car-bombing. “Pinochet was upset that Fernandez had developed this attitude,” according to the summary of the Fernandez debriefing. Pinochet also rejected his attempts to resign from the military. Fernandez also related hearing that Pinochet, identified as “the chief,” had given the order to DINA head Manuel Contreras to assassinate Letelier. “Pinochet was implicated as ordering the assassination,” according to this report. ebb930 doc8 Document 8 State Department, cable, “Letelier Case,” Secret Roger Channel, January 22, 1987 Jan 22, 1987 Source Obama Administration Special Declassification on Letelier-Moffitt Case This nine-page summary of the January 14, 1987, debriefing of Armando Fernandez Larios at a safe house in Santiago, Chile, states that it is a “transcript of interview with Fernandez.” Rather than a literal transcript, it is a summary of the ten-hour meeting, how it progressed and who said what. The long memorandum traces the entire debriefing from beginning to end, including Fernandez Larios’ description of: the initial mission to Paraguay with DINA operative Michael Townley to obtain false passports to the U.S. before the assassination; meeting with Townley in a men’s room at JFK airport to provide him with cash and surveillance information for the Letelier mission; and his interactions with Gen. Pinochet and Col. Contreras after the assassination. In this first meeting with U.S. officials, Fernandez claims that he had only been told the mission to the U.S. was to conduct surveillance on Letelier, not to harm him. A week later in Brazil, however, he repeatedly failed a polygraph test on the question of his knowledge of the real objective to assassinate Letelier. ebb930 doc9 Document 9 CIA, Intelligence Assessment, “Pinochet’s Role in the Letelier Assassination and Subsequent Coverup,” Secret, May 1, 1987 May 1, 1987 Source Obama Chile Declassification At the request of Secretary of State George Shultz, the CIA reviewed its raw intelligence intercepts and reports on General Augusto Pinochet’s role in the September 21, 1976, car bombing assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt. Beginning in 1978, the agency gathered intelligence—still classified—supplied by high-level informants close to Pinochet and to his secret police chief, Manuel Contreras. The informants provided detailed information on the relationship between Contreras and Pinochet as well as Pinochet’s personal role in covering up his responsibility for the assassination. “A review of our files on the Letelier assassination,” the CIA reported, “has provided what we regard as convincing evidence that President Pinochet personally ordered his intelligence chief to carry out the murder.” The assessment added that Pinochet later “decided to stonewall on the case to hide his involvement…to protect his hold on the presidency” and even considered murdering Manual Contreras, the head of DINA, because he was the one man who knew Pinochet had ordered the assassination. ebb930 doc10 Document 10 DOS, Memorandum to the President, “Pinochet and the Letelier-Moffitt Murders: Implications for US Policy,” Secret, October 6, 1987 Oct 6, 1987 To convince President Reagan that the time has come to terminate U.S. support for the Pinochet regime, Secretary of State George Shultz reports that the CIA has “convincing evidence” that Pinochet “personally ordered” the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington. Shultz characterizes the car bombing as “perhaps the only clear case of state-supported terrorism that has occurred in Washington D.C.” According to Shultz, “this is a blatant example of a chief of state’s direct involvement in an act of state terrorism, one that is particularly disturbing both because it occurred in our capital and since his government is generally considered to be friendly.” Secretary Shultz advises the President that Pinochet’s direct involvement must affect...our overall policy towards Chile.” He urges Reagan to shift U.S. policy from support for the dictatorship to a push for civilian governance. “What we now know about Pinochet’s role in these assassinations,” Shultz concludes, “is of the greatest seriousness and adds further impetus to the need to work toward complete democratization of Chile.” ebb930 doc11 Document 11 CIA, intelligence cable, “[Deleted] Strategy of Chilean Government with Respect to Letelier Case, and Impact of Case on Stability of President Pinochet,” Secret, June 23, 1978 Jun 23, 1978 Source Clinton Chile Declassification Project As revelations of DINA’s role in the Letelier-Moffitt assassination spread in Chile, the CIA station in Santiago transmits a detailed report on Pinochet’s efforts to “stonewall” any investigation of his own role and block prosecution of his officials. Drawing on CIA sources inside the military, the report summarizes Pinochet’s strategy: “A. Protect General (r) Manuel Contreras from successful prosecution; B. Stonewall any further requests from the U.S. Government; C. Continue to ‘lobby’ the [Chilean] Supreme Court justices to ensure that requests for extradition of Chilean citizens following anticipated indictments are rejected. D. Continue to exploit Chilean nationalism with a covert action campaign to portray the Letelier investigation as being politically motivated -- another pretext for destabilizing the Pinochet regime.” The CIA also reports that Contreras “admitted his culpability” for the crime to the official Chilean military investigator but “threatened to claim he was acting on orders from Pinochet in the event he were prosecuted.” According to the CIA, Contreras “claimed he had safely secreted documentation to support his claim. This blackmail threat worked,” the CIA reported. “Thus, the coverup began.” ebb930 doc12 Document 12 CIA, Intelligence Assessment, “Chile: Implications of the Letelier Case,” Secret-Sensitive, May 1978 May 1, 1978 Source Clinton Chile Declassification Project After the FBI identified the Chilean secret police, DINA, as responsible for the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, the CIA drafted a comprehensive assessment on how Pinochet will attempt to hide his regime’s role in an act of international terrorism and move to protect his power if he is implicated in this atrocity. “The [Chilean] government’s reaction to proof of Pinochet’s complicity in the Letelier slaying might take one of several courses,” according to the assessment, which correctly predicts “an attempt to institute a coverup, with charges that the US is trying to destabilize the regime.” The assessment quotes a member of the military junta as calling the scandal “a Chilean Watergate.”

Argentina's Wild Oil Boom In Vaca de Muerte

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/24/world/americas/argentina-oil-patagonia-milei.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8FA.wFfE.Y3jGNuF0tiem&smid=url-share

At Least 216 Dead In Colombia's Strongest Quake In Years

At Least 216 Dead in Colombia’s Strongest Quake in Years COLOMBIA Colombia Rescuers continued to search for thousands of missing people Tuesday after a powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia earlier this week, killing at least 216 people, injuring almost 2,600 more, leaving nearly 4,000 unaccounted for and collapsing structures across the country. The quake struck shortly after 7:30 a.m. local time Monday, hitting cities including Cali, Pereira, Quibdó and Manizales, with tremors also felt in neighboring Ecuador and Panama. The US Geological Survey said the epicenter was near San José del Palmar, a community of about 4,800 people in the Chocó region, about 250 miles west of Bogotá. The Colombian Geological Service described it as the country’s strongest recorded earthquake “in the 21st century.” Several aftershocks followed. Officials said around 1,600 buildings were damaged or had collapsed across the country. In Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, search teams and civilians formed lines to remove concrete and rubble from destroyed buildings. Pereira, another of the hardest-hit cities, was plunged into darkness Monday evening as volunteers searched for survivors. Authorities had little information about the full extent of damage in Chocó, one of Colombia’s poorest regions, where dense jungle and limited road access are complicating efforts to assess the toll. The disaster presents the first major challenge for President Abelardo de la Espriella, who was sworn in over the weekend and had been in office for only three days. De la Espriella declared a state of emergency and said he had personally taken charge of the response, mobilizing the military and police. The earthquake follows two powerful quakes in neighboring Venezuela in late June, killing more than 6,300 people and destroying hundreds of buildings. International assistance began mobilizing Monday night, with the US State Department announcing $15.5 million for emergency shelter, food and other aid. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Chilean President José Antonio Kast also offered assistance.

Iran's IRGC Plans To Launch Attacks In The US!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9lNAlMITxE

Argentina, U.S. In Diplomatic Fight with Brasil Over Election Interference

Argentina, US in Diplomatic Fight With Brazil Over Election Interference BRAZIL Brazil Brazilian fears of interference in its upcoming presidential election are causing a severe diplomatic brouhaha on two continents, with the country recalling its ambassador to Argentina and accusing the US of attempting to manipulate the vote results in favor of the current president’s right-wing opponent. On Tuesday, Brazil recalled its ambassador and downgraded its diplomatic relations with Argentina following a fresh round of remarks by Argentine President Javier Milei criticizing his Brazilian counterpart, leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula. At a rally over the weekend in the Brazilian city of São Paulo to launch the campaign of Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro and Lula’s main opponent in Brazil's October presidential vote, the Argentine leader referred to Lula as a "thief." He also criticized Brazil's Supreme Court over its decision to sentence Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years for his role in a failed coup attempt after he lost the 2022 elections to Lula. Lula reacted to the comments by saying, "In Brazil, we do not accept anyone sticking their nose where it doesn't belong." Meanwhile, in a separate diplomatic dispute over the elections, the Trump administration on Tuesday revoked the visa of Brazil's ambassador after Brazil denied visas to two US diplomats on the grounds that Washington was seeking to interfere in Brazil's elections. The US is also upset by what it sees as Brazil stalling on approving President Donald Trump’s nominee to become ambassador in Brasilia. Trump has had a fractious relationship with the Lula administration, which has opposed him on numerous policies, but also because of Trump’s close relationship with Jair Bolsonaro. Trump imposed sanctions on Brazilian officials and tariffs to punish the country for its prosecution of the former president and his allies. As a result, Lula, who was recently confirmed as his party's candidate in the upcoming presidential vote, has increasingly portrayed himself as a defender of Brazilian sovereignty against foreign interference.

Brasilian President Lula To Run Again

Brazilian President Lula to Run Again to ‘Protect Fatherland’ From Foreign Interference BRAZIL Brazil Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva launched his bid for a fourth and final term in the upcoming presidential election over the weekend, casting the election as a choice between national independence and submission to foreign interests. The president, 80, also known as Lula, was officially confirmed as the candidate for the leftist Workers’ Party in October’s elections, in what will be his seventh race for the country’s top job. The election is expected to pit Lula against Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently serving a 27-year sentence for attempting a coup after he lost the 2022 elections to Lula. Right-wing political leaders such as Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Argentina’s Javier Milei and US President Donald Trump have expressed support for Bolsonaro’s campaign. In a speech announcing his run, Lula promised to protect Brazil’s reserves of rare earths and other critical minerals from foreign control. “I want to be prepared, so that no one invades this country,” he said. He also warned against foreign interference in the election, particularly by the Trump administration, casting himself as the defender of the fatherland. For the past 18 months, Lula’s popular support has grown as Brazilians have soured on the Bolsonaros after the Trump administration, at their urging, imposed steep tariffs on Brazil and sanctioned its officials to protest the legal proceedings against Jair Bolsonaro. Flávio Bolsonaro has requested the Trump administration delay its new tariffs on Brazil as he believes it will help Lula, a conclusion analysts agree with. More recently, while Lula is still ahead in the polls, the gap has narrowed significantly: One recent poll showed that 46 percent of Brazilian voters support the current president and 45 percent favor Bolsonaro. Other recent polls show Lula ahead by more than 10 percentage points if the Oct. 4 election goes to a second round, to be held on Oct. 25. That would occur if neither candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote. The election, meanwhile, is being closely watched across Latin America, where several countries including Peru, Colombia and Chile have recently ejected left-wing governments in favor of conservative leaders aligned with the US.

Ecuador "Canal Of Death"

Ecuador’s ‘Canal of Death’ Underscores How Its War on Crime Is Flailing ECUADOR Ecuador The canal in the Nueva Prosperina district of Guayaquil on Ecuador’s western coast was built more than a decade ago for agricultural irrigation, forming part of a 45-kilometer aqueduct. It was once a quiet, peaceful, if polluted, waterway in a city once known as the "Pearl of the Pacific." These days, the bodies of more than 100 murder victims thrown into the canal's murky waters have resurfaced – stripped naked or stuffed into burlap sacks, often bound and showing signs of torture and sometimes decapitated. Locally, the waterway has been dubbed the “Canal of Death,” a dumping ground for the bodies of drug runners, their associates and their many unfortunate victims in what has become the most violent neighborhood in the city. The waterway has become a symbol of the massive drug-related crime problem that continues to plague Ecuador, a country that over the past few years has become a haven for cartels seeking to ship their narcotics and other illicit products to Asia, Europe and North America. “(Ecuador has become) a critical link in the global drug trade,” said CNN. As a result, “Ecuador is turning into a war zone.” The consequences of that role are stark. Six Ecuadorian cities were ranked among the top 10 most dangerous in the world in 2025, according to the Mexico-based Citizen Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice. Three years ago, Ecuadorans hailed the arrival of President Daniel Noboa, who promised to crack down on crime. But analysts say that his tough-on-crime efforts haven’t been as impactful as Ecuadorans had hoped. “Once one of South America’s safest countries, Ecuador has in under a decade become its most violent, transforming into a hub of the drug trade to Europe,” wrote the International Crisis Group. “President Daniel Noboa’s iron-fist approach brought murder rates down at first, but violence has since soared again and crime continues unabated.” It’s also spreading to regions in Ecuador that had long managed to escape it. And as analysts note, it’s changing Ecuadoran society and its economy. Now, many people are afraid to go out to bars or restaurants or go shopping. It’s now become normal to refrain from greeting people in the street. As a result, businesses are struggling. Attacking the crime issue, meanwhile, is coming with costs. Human rights activists, for instance, have raised concerns about Ecuadoran security forces cracking down on drug gangs, often with the help of American military advisers. Human Rights Watch found that Ecuadoran security forces “tortured four Colombian farm workers during a joint operation with the US,” wrote the Miami Herald. The troops beat them, shocked them with electricity and conducted mock executions without ever charging the workers with a crime. “The two countries’ security relationship is deepening at a moment when both governments have engaged in serious human rights violations fueled by their insistence on framing their confrontations with organized crime groups as a kind of war,” wrote Human Rights Watch. This close cooperation could take a political toll on Noboa, who has pushed his close relationship with US President Donald Trump. Last year, Ecuadoran voters rejected Noboa’s proposal to allow foreign military bases in the country, illustrating their reluctance to allow him to take the alliance with the US military and private contractors too far. Despite that referendum and as the human rights activists’ complaints show, Noboa’s administration is working more closely than ever with US authorities, according to InSight Crime. American officials recently added Chone Killers, an Ecuadorian gang, to the US list of foreign terrorist organizations, freeing up funds, enabling sanctions and giving them authority to help local security forces hunt down its members, InSight Crime added. Meanwhile, Noboa’s administration is insisting that crime rates are falling. But Ecuadorans like Luis of Quevedo, in the agricultural province of Los Ríos, aren’t buying that. He says that he grew up in a peaceful, rural region surrounded by banana, plantain and coffee farms. Now, he and his family fear for their lives: He was kidnapped. So was his elderly father-in-law in a different incident. After paying ransoms, armed men came to their home and began shooting because they said they miscalculated and wanted more money. “We want to think that life goes on as usual,” he told El País. “But we no longer have that peaceful life we ​​once had.”

Mexico Begins Legal Action In US Over Deaths Of Citizens in ICE Custody

Mexico Begins Legal Action in US Over Deaths of Citizens in ICE Custody and During Raids MEXICO Mexico formally asked US state attorneys general this week to open criminal investigations into the deaths of Mexican citizens in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody or during raids, marking its strongest response yet to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the move Tuesday and said the government also plans to file a similar complaint with the US Department of Justice. The United States is not legally required to act on the requests. The ministry added that the government has also sent cease-and-desist letters to detention facilities where Mexicans have died, including California’s Adelanto center, where four citizens reportedly died. Officials described the letters as a first step toward “the eventual filing of civil lawsuits” against the companies operating the detention centers in an effort to stop alleged human rights violations. The move comes a week after Mexican immigrant Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot and killed during an ICE raid in Houston. Salgado Araujo had no criminal record and had lived in the US for 35 years. According to Mexico’s government, 17 Mexican migrants have died during immigration enforcement operations or while in custody since US President Donald Trump began his second term in January 2025. The complaints mark an escalation in Sheinbaum’s response to Washington’s immigration policies. Earlier this year, Mexico instructed its diplomatic missions in the United States to regularly check on Mexican nationals held in ICE custody. In addition to Tuesday’s complaints, Mexican Foreign Minister Roberto Velasco Álvarez sent a letter to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk asking his office to seek information from US authorities and assess whether the deaths are consistent with Washington’s international obligations.

In Venezuela Earthquake Survivors Say They Can Only Count On themselves

In Venezuela, Earthquake Survivors Say They Can Only Count on Themselves VENEZUELA Venezuela Single mother Astrid Arnaude, 35, and her eight-year-old daughter, Jade Hernández, endured 60 hours trapped under the rubble after two earthquakes struck Venezuela on June 24. They distracted themselves by talking to each other. “We had deep conversations about spirituality and life,” Arnaude told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “(Jade) told me, ‘I don’t want to suffer, Mama. If we die, I don’t want that we suffer.’ And that was like the faith that maintained us, that allowed us to hold on through so much.” Luckily, they survived thanks to rescue teams and volunteers, including heroes like Darwin Rodriguez, a mechanic nicknamed Culebrita (Little Snake) for his skill in slithering into tight spaces to save his fellow citizens. “I’m not afraid,” Rodriguez, 32, said in an interview with the Guardian about his rescue missions. “But you need to be brave to do this.” The 7.2-magnitude and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes struck within a minute of each other around 100 miles west of the capital of Caracas around dinnertime. The quakes brought down buildings, ignited fires and trapped thousands in rubble. By mid-July, more than 4,500 people had been confirmed dead. Interim President Delcy Rodríguez, who assumed office after American special forces seized her predecessor, former President Nicolás Maduro, in early January, declared a state of emergency and sent appeals to US President Donald Trump for assistance. About 2,000 US service members supported the relief effort. These efforts have made little impact on the ground, however. Years of economic mismanagement, corruption and poor oversight under Rodríguez and Maduro’s socialist governments, and the toll of American sanctions imposed over alleged corruption and repression, have eroded public services. It’s not clear if the Venezuelan government can weather the housing and public health crisis that it is now facing. Currently, thousands of survivors remain outdoors, afraid of damaged homes, looting and heavy rains. Those in makeshift, crowded camps face disease outbreaks, doctors warned. Maria Piñate, a 64-year-old pensioner, was living in an apartment in downtown Caracas when the earthquakes hit. “We don’t dare go back in – the walls will fall on top of us,” she told Turkey’s Anadolu Agency, pointing to cracks in the façade of the building. Living in her car, she is better off than many of her neighbors, whose tents fill with water when the heavy rains fall. “There are lots of people – far too many people – who have truly lost everything,” she added. Following the disaster, the future of tens of thousands of people is up in the air. Many have lost homes and jobs in a country where the majority was already struggling to survive. Meanwhile, many Venezuelans are furious at the government’s tepid response, pointing at a failure to mobilize the heavy machinery and manpower needed to rescue survivors, and at poorly built public housing, insufficient safety regulations and disaster preparation. They say the first responders were fishermen, doctors and émigrés returning from abroad to help. Citing what she called the government’s incompetence, corruption, and slow disaster response, exiled Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado called on the Venezuelan and American governments to allow her to return and help lead a transition in a time of tragedy. Nearly half of Venezuelans said holding new elections was more urgent than rebuilding, Bloomberg reported, citing polls. More than 63 percent disapproved of Rodríguez’s job performance. Whether a new government can solve the enormous problems the country currently faces is an open question. At the moment, many Venezuelans say they feel deserted and can only rely on themselves. As a result, neighbors, friends and strangers – even those abroad – organized themselves, conducted rescues and provided shelter, food and hope to many hurt by the quakes. They realized, they said, they only have each other to count on. “Where is the government, the president, the helicopters, the aid?” asked Sabrina Carranza, 21, who lost her home in the disaster, in an interview with the Washington Post. “The police come, take pictures and leave. They are making fun of us.”

"Worst of the Worst" ICE and the Case of Chilean Intelligence Operative Armando Fernandez Larios

“Worst of the Worst”: ICE and the Case of Chilean Intelligence Operative Armando Fernandez Larios Search ICE Detained Ex-Chilean Agent for Criminal Acts of Murder—Then Let Him Go 50 Years Ago, Fernandez Larios Participated in Pinochet Plot to Assassinate Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C. Former DINA Agent Was Part of “Caravan of Death” that Executed Civilians After September 1973 Military Coup Published: Jul 10, 2026 Briefing Book # 926 Edited by Peter Kornbluh For further information, contact: Peter Kornbluh: 202-374-7281 or peter.kornbluh@gmail.com Subjects Human Rights and Genocide Secrecy and FOIA Terrorism and Counterterrorism Regions South America Events Chile – Coup d’État, 1973 Project Chile book The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability By Peter Kornbluh, New Press (September 11, 2013) book cover Pinochet desclasificado by Peter Kornbluh, Un Dia en La Vida/Editorial Catalonia (August, 2023) assassination on embassy row book cover Assassination on Embassy Row by John Dinges and Saul Landau, Pantheon Books (January, 1980) The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents by John Dinges, The New Press (August 1, 2012) Los Anos del Condor book cover Los años del Cóndor (Spanish Edition) by John Dinges, DEBATE (June 1, 2021) Operation Condor book cover Operation Condor: The Pact That Terrorized a Continent by Francesca Lessa, Sebastián Santana (May 12, 2026) Washington D.C., July 10, 2026 - On October 27, 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents quietly detained Armando Fernandez Larios, a former Chilean secret police operative living in Florida. His incarceration at the Krome Detention Center in Miami remained unknown until he appeared on the Department of Homeland Security’s “worst of the worst” list—one of several Trump administration publicity stunts from January 2026 meant to demonstrate that ICE was rounding up immigrants with actual criminal backgrounds. Despite detaining Fernandez Larios for past crimes of “homicide,” ICE released him from custody after he filed an “unlawful detention” lawsuit, according to court records posted today by the National Security Archive alongside declassified documents on his role in an act of international terrorism in Washington, D.C., 50 years ago. Rather than respond to the lawsuit, ICE officials freed Fernandez Larios on March 19, 2026, according to a legal ruling in the case obtained by the Archive’s Chile Documentation Project. The March 30 ruling by Chief U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga dismissed the Fernandez Larios suit as “moot” because ICE had already released him. But the ruling provides details on the latest twist in the saga of a notorious Chilean human rights violator who has been living freely in Florida for decades despite his involvement in the September 21, 1976, car bombing that took the lives of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his 25-year-old associate, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, in downtown Washington, D.C., and his conviction in a 2003 federal civil lawsuit for his role in an elite military unit known as “the Caravan of Death.” The Letelier-Moffitt Assassination In his lawsuit against ICE, Fernandez Larios presented “a breach-of contract claim,” arguing that the U.S. government had broken a legal agreement made in early 1987 when he sought to defect to the United States during the final years of the Pinochet dictatorship. For his role in the Letelier-Moffitt assassination, Fernandez Larios would plead guilty to being an “accessory after the fact to murder” and testify truthfully about the Letelier operation and General Pinochet’s role in it. In return, the U.S. Justice Department recommended a reduced sentence and promised that it “would neither seek to deport [him] to Chile nor cooperate in his extradition to Chile, absent a violation of the agreement.” Now, according to the Fernandez Larios complaint, the U.S. government had “materially breached the parties’ plea agreement by initiating removal proceedings and detaining [him] for the purpose of deporting him to Chile.” Fifty years ago, Fernandez Larios was a 26-year-old agent of the Chilean Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA)—the Pinochet regime’s secret police force responsible for much of the repression during the early years of the military dictatorship, including international assassination operations. In mid-1976, Fernandez Larios and DINA’s leading hitman, Michael Townley, were ordered to undertake an operation in the United States against General Pinochet’s leading critic in exile, Orlando Letelier. DINA’s deputy director, Col. Pedro Espinoza, instructed Townley that he and Lt. Col. Armando Fernandez Larios were to travel to Paraguay to obtain false passports and U.S. visas and then on to Washington, D.C., for a mission “the result of which would be the assassination of Orlando Letelier,” according to a declassified State Department summary of the case. Townley and Fernandez Larios did travel to Asuncion, Paraguay, as part of a collaboration of Southern Cone secret police services known as Operation Condor where they obtained false passports from the Paraguayans. After some delay, they were provided visas from the U.S. Embassy, after claiming to be on a secret mission to meet with CIA deputy director Vernon Walters at Langley headquarters in Virginia. But instead of flying to the United States, they returned to Santiago, concerned that U.S. officials were suspicious of their cover story. After waiting a month to see if the Letelier operation had been compromised, Fernandez Larios traveled to Washington using a false Chilean passport under the name “Armando Faundez Lyon.” His assignment was to conduct advance surveillance on Letelier’s movements. In a men’s lavatory at John F. Kennedy airport on September 9, 1976, Fernandez furtively rendezvoused with Townley to provide him with a surveillance map, notes on Letelier’s home and office addresses, as well as cash for the operation. Townley then recruited members of the violent anti-Castro Cuban exile group, the Cuban National Movement, to assist him in building, placing, and detonating the car bomb. On September 21, 1976, Letelier and his 25-year-old colleague at the Institute for Policy Studies, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, were killed when the bomb attached to the undercarriage of the Chevrolet Chevelle they were riding in exploded as they drove to work in downtown Washington, D.C. Moffitt’s husband, Michael, was the sole survivor of the bombing. polygraph In a “Factual Proffer” provided to U.S. officials in early February 1987, Fernandez Larios claimed he had been excluded from all discussions on eliminating Letelier. But he conceded that he “understood that the true purpose might be other than the limited surveillance mission described to him, [and] that the outcome to the object of the mission, Orlando Letelier, might very well be harm or even death.” A polygraph test administered to him in Brazil as U.S. officials sought to determine his credibility showed “consistent signs of deception in Fernandez’ disclaimers” that he did not know the true intention of his DINA mission. “He now acknowledges that his surveillance contributed to the death of Letelier and Moffitt,” according to a secret summary of his polygraph results included in today’s posting. In the aftermath of the assassination, Fernandez Larios participated in an extensive cover-up orchestrated by high DINA officials—and by General Pinochet himself. Fernandez Larios admitted to deceiving official military investigators, testifying falsely before the Chilean Supreme Court (after he was identified in the U.S. and Chilean press, along with Townley, as a lead suspect in the car bombing), and lying to U.S. investigators from the FBI and Justice Department. After the Carter administration demanded his extradition in 1978, Fernandez Larios was confined to a military hospital in Santiago for 14 months, along with former DINA director Manuel Contreras and deputy director Pedro Espinoza. When he let it be known that he wanted to go to the United States “to resolve this matter,” he was called to a meeting with General Pinochet, who ordered him to stay put. “Be a good soldier, tough it out,” Pinochet told him, “and this problem will have a happy end.” A comprehensive CIA review of its intelligence on the Letelier-Moffitt case, conducted a few months after Fernandez Larios defected, concluded that there was “convincing evidence that President Pinochet personally ordered his intelligence chief to carry out the murder.” The assessment added that Pinochet later “decided to stonewall on the case to hide his involvement and, ultimately, to protect his hold on the presidency.” In late 1985, U.S. officials used an intermediary to approach Fernandez Larios, and he renewed his efforts to defect to the United States. An initial secret meeting with several U.S. officials, lasting ten hours, took place in Santiago in mid-January 1987. State Department and FBI officers then arranged to debrief him in Brazil later that month and subsequently brought him to the United States. On February 4, 1987, Fernandez Larios appeared in the Washinton courtroom of Judge Barrington Parker. He was not charged as an accomplice in a terrorist attack, but rather as an “accessory after the fact” who “did testify falsely and provide false information” to help his DINA superiors “escape apprehension for trial and punishment.” To obtain a reduced sentence for him, Justice Department officials pledged to “make the Court aware of the nature and extent of Mr. Fernandez Larios’ cooperation with all branches of the United States government with which he is assisting”—an indication that Fernandez Larios might be sharing information on DINA operations with U.S. intelligence agencies. letelier moffit monumen Letelier-Moffitt Memorial, Sheridan Circle, Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Peter Kornbluh) On May 6, 1987, Judge Parker sentenced him to up to seven years in prison. Almost immediately, U.S. officials began lobbying for his release. “I personally have come to know Mr. Fernandez Larios and his character well,” State Department legal advisor Michael Kozak wrote to the U.S. Parole Commission in July 1987. “I can attest that when he is released from prison he will nonetheless continue to be punished every day. He has given up a great deal because of his willingness to come forward and pay his debt to the United States and society at large,” according to Kozak. “In my judgement, Mr. Fernandez Larios is a remarkably stable and responsible individual who poses no danger to society.” After only five months of incarceration, Fernandez Larios was released on parole on September 11, 1987—the 14th anniversary of Chile’s military coup. The Caravan of Death As part of his plea-bargain negotiations, according to a secret summary of his first debriefing with U.S. officials, Fernandez Larios was “fully aware that if he fails any further tests of his credibility…on any significant point, including involvement in other violent acts, any agreement would be void and he would be in serious jeopardy.” Yet Fernandez Larios appears to have withheld information on his multiple violent human rights atrocities committed as a member of an elite military unit known as the “Caravan of Death.” In the weeks following the coup, an elite team of military operatives helicoptered into smaller towns in the north and south of Chile seizing municipal officials—mayors, council members, police chiefs, and others—who were supporters of the deposed president, Salvador Allende. Approximately 72 individuals were summarily executed; many of them then disappeared. Multiple witnesses identified Fernandez Larios as one of the most ruthless members of the military death squad. Fernandes Larios Fernandez Larios during the Caravan of Death civil suit, July 2003 After Pinochet was forced from power in 1990, investigations into the atrocities of his regime began. As the Caravan’s victims were located and exhumed, Chilean authorities initiated legal proceedings against the perpetrators, including Fernandez Larios. On March 19, 1999, the family of Winston Cabello, a 28-year-old regional planning director in the northern town of Copiapó who was executed along with 12 other political prisoners by the Caravan of Death on October 17, 1973, filed a Federal lawsuit against Fernandez Larios in Florida for “extrajudicial killing, torture, crimes against humanity and cruel and inhuman treatment.” (The family was represented by the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability with the support of the Palo Alto law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich Rosati, and the Florida-based lawyer, Robert Kerrigan.) Over three years of investigation—much of it conducted by Cabello’s sister, Zita Cabello-Barrueto—the legal team tracked down and deposed Chilean witnesses who identified Fernandez Larios as a participant in the torture and executions of prisoners in multiple municipalities. In Copiapó, one witness testified, Fernandez Larios had personally slashed Cabello to death with a curved knife known as a corvo. During the trial, Fernandez Larios testified that he was the only member of the military unit that carried that weapon as an “ornament” on his uniform. Winston Cabello Winston Dwight Cabello Bravo The three-week trial ended on October 15, 2003, 30 years after Cabello’s death. The jury found Fernandez Larios liable for extrajudicial killings, torture and crimes against humanity, and awarded the family $4 million in damages. “Our lawsuit marked the first time in US history that in a contested jury trial someone was found responsible for crimes against humanity,” Zita Cabello-Barrueto wrote in her memoir about her brother’s case, In Search of Spring. “It was also the first time that any Pinochet operative had been tried in the United States for human rights abuses in Chile.” Extradition Requests During the civil trial against Fernandez Larios, the jury also heard testimony about another human rights crime he committed—the kidnapping and disappearance of the former manager of Chile’s largest copper mine, David Silberman. On October 4, 1974, a team of DINA agents arrived at the Santiago penitentiary where Silberman was being held as a political prisoner and carried him away in an unmarked pick-up truck; he was never seen again. The warden at the jail testified that the leader of the DINA unit that took him was Fernandez Larios. Silberman’s disappearance became another human rights crime linked to Fernandez Larios; and as they had done in the Caravan of Death cases, Chilean judicial authorities sought his extradition from the United States. Indeed, since the late 1990s, Fernandez Larios has been the subject of five extradition efforts, most recently as part of an investigation into the September 1976 murder of Ronni Moffitt. Last month, a Chilean magistrate, Paola Plaza, announced she had closed that case, finding three more DINA agents guilty of participating in the terrorist plot 50 years ago. The U.S. never responded to Chile’s extradition request for Fernandez Larios. Presumably, Fernandez Larios remains protected from being extradited to Chile; but he still could be deported to a third country—a practice the Trump administration has notoriously used to expel immigrants from the United States—and transferred to Chile from there. In addition, his arrest by ICE last October reveals that Fernandez Larios’ immigration status remains in limbo, as it has been for decades. In 2005, Fernandez Larios attempted to secure an “S” visa that protects foreign informants from ejection from the United States. But key U.S. government officials opposed granting him that protective status. “Some immigration officials have wanted to detain Fernández Larios to face deportation proceedings, citing his lack of any immigration papers and a 1996 law that mandates deportation of foreigners convicted of aggravated felonies,” the Miami Herald reported at the time. More than 20 years later, that little-known effort to deport him appears to have been revisited. Although Fernandez Larios is, once again, living freely in Florida, the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Letelier-Moffitt assassination is likely to bring renewed attention to his role in one of the most infamous atrocities ever committed on the streets of Washington, D.C. “If there is anyone who truly qualifies as ‘the worst of the worst,’ observes the Archive’s senior analyst on Chile, Peter Kornbluh, “it is Armando Fernandez Larios.” The Documents ebb926 d1 Document 1 United States District Court, Armando Fernandez-Larios, petitioner, v. Charles Parra, et al, Respondents, March 30, 2026 Mar 30, 2026 Source United States District Court, Southern District of Florida This four-page ruling by Chief U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga reveals key details about what transpired after ICE agents detained former Chilean DINA operative Armando Fernandez Larios in October 2025. After spending almost four months at the Krome Detention Center in Miami, on February 20, 2026, Fernandez Larios filed a writ of Habeas Corpus petition, challenging his detention, with an additional “breach of contract” claim. That claim argued that the United States government had violated a plea agreement Fernandez Larios had made in 1987 to provide information on the September 21, 1976, car-bombing assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in return for a shortened prison sentence and a promise that the Government “would neither seek to deport [him] to Chile nor to cooperate in his extradition to Chile.” The judge ordered ICE to respond to the suit by March 19, 2026. But instead of responding, ICE officials released Fernandez Larios. “On March 19, 2026—the same day Respondents’ Return was due,” the judge stated in her ruling, “the Government paroled [Fernandez Larios].” On the basis of his release and with “no pending removal proceeding or threatened proceeding,” the judge dismissed the Habeas suit. ebb926 d2 Document 2 State Department, Roger Channel Cable, [Highlights of U.S. Team’s Ten-Hour Interview with Fernandez Larios], Top Secret/Eyes Only, January 15, 1987 Jan 15, 1987 Source Clinton Administration Chile Declassification Project This Top Secret/Roger Channel cable from the U.S. Embassy in Santiago reports on a secret ten-hour meeting between Armando Fernandez Larios and U.S. officials. Fernandez Larios recounts his role in the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, divulging that General Augusto Pinochet personally engaged in a cover-up of the crime by blocking Fernandez Larios from turning himself over to the United States. “Pinochet was upset that Fernandez had developed this attitude, told him that he had to be a good soldier, to continue the struggle and this problem would have a happy end.” U.S. officials deemed Fernandez Larios “credible” and reported that “what he has to offer as a witness is of substantial impact from both a law enforcement and foreign policy standpoint.” ebb926 d3 Document 3 State Department, Roger channel cable, “Letelier,” Secret, January 26, 1987 Jan 26, 1987 Source Clinton Administration Chile Declassification Project After debriefing Fernandez Larios in Santiago in mid-January 1987, U.S. officials assisted his departure from Chile on January 22 to Brazil. There, he underwent further debriefings and took a series of polygraph exams to determine his credibility. On the key issue of his knowledge of the true intent of his Letelier mission, he failed. A polygraph showed “consistent signs of deception in Fernandez’ disclaimers,” and “he now acknowledges that his surveillance contributed to the death of Letelier and Moffitt,” according to this secret cable summarizing the results of the polygraph exams. “Polygraph examination has resulted in acknowledgement by Fernandez that he ‘supposed’ prior to trip to Paraguay that operation was to result in death of Letelier.” ebb926 d4 Document 4 Department of State, memorandum, “Results of Interview with Indicted Letelier Assassin,” Secret/Sensitive, January 26, 1987 Jan 26, 1987 Source Clinton Administration Chile Declassification Project In a report on the results of the debriefings of Fernandez Larios, an unidentified State Department officer appears to ignore the results of the polygraph tests and declares that “Fernandez is not a murderer or party to a conspiracy to murder.” The document states that “Fernandez also asserts no involvement in other crimes”—a claim later disproven by evidence of his role in the Caravan of Death and other DINA operations. The report points out that his information on the Letelier-Moffitt case is “of limited value” but that “the foreign policy benefits are substantial” and warrant a plea bargain deal for his cooperation. ebb926 d5 Document 5 DOJ, “Factual Proffer,” February 4, 1987 Feb 4, 1987 Source DNSA, Chile and the U.S.: U.S. Policy toward Democracy, Dictatorship, and Human Rights, 1970–1990 This 15-page “proffer” summarizes Fernandez Larios’ testimonial confession of events relating to the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt and the subsequent effort by General Pinochet and high-ranking DINA officers to cover up the regime’s role in an act of international terrorism. Fernandez Larios has convinced U.S. officials that he was never told he was participating in a mission of international assassination. But he concedes in his proffer that he “understood that the true purpose might be other than the limited surveillance mission described to him, [and] that the outcome to the object of the mission, Orlando Letelier, might very well be harm or even death.” The proffer details his role in the cover-up after the assassination as well as his interactions with General Pinochet, whose role in the terrorist attack the cover-up was designed to hide. ebb926 d6 Document 6 Federal District Court, Transcript, [Fernandez Larios Plea Bargain Hearing], February 4, 1987 Feb 4, 1987 Source Federal District Court On February 4, 1987, Armando Fernandez Larios appeared in the Washington, D.C., courtroom of Judge Barrington Parker to plead guilty to one charge of “accessory after the fact to murder of an internationally protected person.” The hearing addressed his cooperation in return for a reduced sentence; the Justice Department sought a prison term of seven years and assured the judge that they would “make the Court aware of the nature and extent of Mr. Fernandez Larios’ cooperation with all branches of the United States government with which he is assisting.” ebb926 d7 Document 7 Department of State, Letter, [Legal Advisor Michael Kozak Letter to Parole Board on Releasing Fernandez Larios], July 21, 1987 Jul 21, 1987 Source Clinton Administration Chile Declassification Project Almost as soon as Fernandez Larios went to prison, U.S. officials began lobbying for his quick release. The State Department’s legal advisor, Michael Kozak, sent a letter to the U.S. Parole Commission in July 1987 lauding Fernandez Larios for coming forward and providing evidence on an international crime in which he had participated. “I personally have come to know Mr. Fernandez Larios and his character well,” Kozak wrote to the Parole Commission. “I can attest that when he is released from prison he will nonetheless continue to be punished every day. He has given up a great deal because of his willingness to come forward and pay his debt to the United States and society at large.” Their lobbying efforts were successful. After only five months of incarceration, Fernandez Larios was paroled in the fall of 1987. ebb926 d8 Document 8 Department of State, Memorandum from Secretary Shultz to President Reagan, “Pinochet and the Letelier-Moffitt Murders: Implications for U.S. Policy,” Secret, October 6, 1987 Oct 6, 1987 Source Special Chilean Government request for US Records on 40th anniversary of the Letelier-Moffitt Assassination The defection of Armando Fernandez Larios and his testimony implicating General Augusto Pinochet in an act of international terrorism in Washington, D.C., revived interest in the Letelier-Moffitt assassination—in the United States and in Chile. Inside the Reagan administration, Secretary of State George Shultz used the renewed attention to the case to press the President to abandon U.S. support for the Pinochet dictatorship. Shultz instructed the CIA to review its intelligence files on Pinochet’s role in the assassination and then used their conclusions that Pinochet had “personally ordered” the operation as ammunition to convince Reagan that it was time to support a return to democracy in Chile. In this secret memo to the President, Shultz draws on the CIA report and on the Fernandez Larios testimony. “Fernandez’ revelations have had a significant political impact within Chile and the CIA concludes that Pinochet will be ‘unable to satisfy the military’s concern that Pinochet take effective steps to repair the damage already done to the armed forces’ reputation,’” Shultz reports to Reagan. “While some in the USG had previously believed that Pinochet had ordered the murders, and there were strong signs that he was involved in the cover-up, the CIA has never before drawn and presented its conclusion that such strong evidence exists of his leadership role in this act of terrorism.” ebb926 d9 Document 9 Department of State, “The Letelier Dispute: Background and Factual Summary, January 1989 Jan 1989 Source Clinton Administration Chile Declassification Project As the U.S. government presses the Pinochet regime to expel indicted DINA officials to the United States, the State Department provides a comprehensive history of the Letelier-Moffitt case and efforts to bring those responsible to justice. According to the official summary, “In late June or early July 1976, Colonel Pedro Espinoza, Director of Operations for DINA, instructed Michael Vernon Townley, an expatriate United States citizen living in Chile, and Armando Fernandez, a lieutenant in the Chilean Army, to participate in a mission, the result of which would be the assassination of Orlando Letelier.” The nine-page summary provides a chronology of U.S. efforts to obtain the extradition of Espinoza and DINA chief Manuel Contreras, and the Pinochet regime’s ongoing obstruction of justice in the case. “The United States continues to demand that Chile cooperate in bringing this matter to a satisfactory resolution,” the report concludes. ebb926 d10 Document 10 Chilean Supreme Court, Extradition Petition for Armando Fernandez Larios in the Caravan of Death Operations, November 9, 2016 Nov 9, 2016 Source Chilean courts In 2016, human rights judge Mario Carroza sought to revive prosecution of the Caravan of Death murders that were carried out on Pinochet’s orders in the weeks following the September 11, 1973, military coup. In an extradition petition authorized by the Chilean Supreme Court, Judge Carroza identified Fernandez Larios as a member of the military death squad that landed in La Serrena on October 16, 1973, and executed, one-by-one, 15 local pro-Allende officials. The victims were then buried in a common grave, according to the petition’s summary of the facts. This extradition petition was one of five sent from Chile for Fernandez Larios as Chilean judicial authorities investigated the human rights atrocities he was involved in. The U.S. government returned, rejected or did not respond to those formal petitions for extradition, which included a request that Fernandez Larios be returned to Chile to be prosecuted for the murder of Ronni Moffitt, who was killed alongside Orlando Letelier in the car bombing, 50 years ago, on September 21, 1976.

Cartel Violence Strikes Mexican Village Amid World Cup

Cartel Violence Strikes Mexican Village Amid World Cup MEXICO Cartel drones dropped bombs on a cluster of rural communities in southern Mexico on Wednesday, deepening frustration among residents even as the government said it has tightened security for the World Cup matches. The assault began around 6 a.m. local time in Guajes de Ayala, a group of rural communities in Guerrero state. No deaths were reported. Residents of the villages said they repeatedly warned authorities that the criminal group La Nueva Familia Michoacana was preparing an assault, yet did not receive protection. Mexican authorities disputed reports of the assault, despite videos circulated by residents appearing to show explosions and gunfire, captured from civilian mountain lookouts. The attacks unfolded while 100,000 police and military personnel were deployed to safeguard World Cup venues in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey. Inhabitants of the communities have expressed disappointment in national authorities as they have concentrated police forces on World Cup hubs, instead of the threatened villages. Guerrero has long been one of Mexico’s most violent states, with rival criminal organizations battling over territory used for drug trafficking and extortion. In the face of what residents described as an absence of security authorities, a civilian-led local self-defense group had already been formed in recent years. The attack comes amid renewed scrutiny of Mexico’s security strategy under President Claudia Sheinbaum, who pledged to curb cartel violence after taking office. While official homicide figures initially declined, violence has intensified in several regions following the death of Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes. Last month, gunmen killed five police officers and wounded five others in Michoacan, just a day before the World Cup opener in Mexico City.

Paraguay Becomes A Prize For The US and China

In the Race for Dominance in South America, Paraguay Becomes a Prize PARAGUAY Landlocked Paraguay has never been a major player in geopolitics. Today, however, the South American country has become the prize in a tug of war between China, Taiwan and the US. Context for this diplomatic game is key. Anti-communist conservatives have long governed Paraguay. In the 1880s, German colonists settled there in a bid to create a home for Aryans. In the 1930s through the 1950s, Nazism was prevalent in the country. In 1957, Taiwan’s nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and Paraguayan military dictator Alfredo Stroessner inked an alliance in a bid to erect a wall against mainland China and the Soviet Union. That legacy is one reason why Paraguayan leader Santiago Pena is close to American President Donald Trump. Since he assumed office in 2023, Pena signed a defense pact with the US, joined Trump’s Gaza-focused Board of Peace, and enthusiastically participated in other White House efforts to expand its influence in the country. On the social front, Pena has also denounced abortion, “alternative” family dynamics, and other “radical” – or, depending on one’s point of view, progressive – social experiments. Lastly, Pena has cultivated links with Spain’s populist political party Vox and Patriots for Europe, a right-wing group of European Parliament members, added University of Birmingham international relations expert Andrew Nickson in the Conversation. But while Pena and his administration remain loyal to Taiwan, China has been trying to drive a wedge between the two nations in its efforts to cement its influence in Latin America, where Trump also wants to grow the US’ dominance. So far, Pena has held fast. “All the Latin American ​countries that switched from Taiwan to China and fell into the arms of the promise of the Chinese dream – every single one of them is worse off than Paraguay,” he said in December. Still, 19 Paraguayan lawmakers, five journalists and a potential opposition presidential candidate have visited China over the past few years. During those visits, analysts say, Chinese officials likely discussed how Paraguay can’t export soy and beef to China because the country is one of only 12 on the planet that maintains diplomatic ties with Taiwan. At the same time, Paraguay imports $6 billion in Chinese goods. Already, several countries such as Honduras, Nauru and Nicaragua have given in to Chinese pressure and abandoned Taiwan in recent years. Taiwan has been countering this charm offensive. The island has lent Paraguay $200 million to build affordable housing, given $20 million for a new hospital and $18 million for a new technical college, and granted 800 Paraguayans scholarships to study science and math in Taipei. Boosters at the Global Taiwan Institute have also called for Taiwan to buy more Paraguayan agricultural products and other goods and invest in data centers that could use the country’s cheap electricity. The US, incidentally, has not only been pushing for more data centers in the country, but it has been investing in them there, too. “The Trump administration has deployed assiduous, patient diplomacy with Paraguay, enlivened by its newly aligned interests in making the country a hub for US-backed data center projects,” wrote Politico. That might make the US the default winner in the competition for Paraguay. Because Paraguayans desperately want to become the ‘Silicon Valley’ of South America. Gabriela Cibils, who worked in Silicon Valley and is now a partner at global technology and investment firm Cibersons, based in Paraguay’s capital Asunción, is leading efforts to build a large and successful tech sector in the country by attempting to attract global tech giants. Paraguay, say local business leaders and officials like Cibils, has everything going for it: an abundance of cheap green energy from the Itaipu Dam on the Paraná River with its enormous hydroelectric power station, a young and educated population and low taxes.