Mexico Will Soon Become The US's Largest Trading Partner

MEXICO

Good Neighbors

US-Mexico relations may have taken a bumpy course over the past few years over immigration but bilateral trade between the two neighbors has been soaring, suggesting Mexico could soon become the largest foreign market for American goods.

US census data released last week showed US-Mexico trade rose to $97.4 billion over the first two months of the year, topping America’s trade with Canada and China, the Washington Post reported.

Those numbers could seesaw – especially as Mexican business has benefited from the hardball tariffs on Chinese goods introduced by the Trump administration even as the same measures reduced US-China trade. But with the finalizing of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the economies of the two countries are likely to become more integrated, according to analysts.

For Luis de la Calle, a former undersecretary of the economy in Mexico, the latest numbers signal a natural course.

“Mexico is a very important market for the United States, and it’s going to become the biggest market for the United States in the world,” he said.

Brasil: Defending The Amazon

BRAZIL

Defending the Amazon

More than 4,000 indigenous people from hundreds of tribes across Brazil have traveled to the capital of Brasilia to protest against President Jair Bolsonaro’s moves to undermine indigenous rights and eliminate agencies tasked with improving their lives.

On Wednesday, indigenous communities began assembling hundreds of tents a stone’s throw from the National Congress in the lead-up to this year’s Free Land Camp, the country’s largest gathering of indigenous people, Al Jazeera reported.

Specifically, the Articulation of the Indigenous People of Brazil (APIB), the main organization behind the annual event, called attention to Bolsonaro’s move to transfer land demarcation and environmental licensing to the Ministry of Agriculture – seen as empowering agribusiness at the expense of indigenous rights.

A week before the event, Bolsonaro reiterated his frequent call for the opening of the Amazon region for commercial exploitation, while APIB and other indigenous groups say his rhetoric has emboldened farmers and companies to violate the existing rules and contributed to an uptick in violence.

Now, special police have been deployed to maintain order, though organizers say the event has been happening peacefully for 15 years.

Venezuela: Safety Valves

VENEZUELA

Safety Valves

Manuel Gonzalez has been sleeping in a park in Riohacha, Colombia, with his 3-year-old son lately. “I beg for food,” the 42-year-old Venezuelan told New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. “At least I can get food here. I may be sleeping on the ground, but it’s better than over there in Venezuela.”

Gonzalez is among the 3 million refugees that the United Nations estimates have fled Venezuela under the corrupt and incompetent regime of President Nicolas Maduro.

The exodus is the latest example of the internationalization of the Venezuelan crisis.

American officials have included Venezuela along with Cuba and Nicaragua in a so-called “troika of tyranny.” National Security Adviser John Bolton recently announced new measures against the troika, reported National Public Radio.

The Atlantic described the policy as one of “gradual economic strangulation.” But the magazine was not sure it would work.

Russia has vowed to continue helping Venezuela economically and militarily, Newsweek wrote. Iran has even floated the possibility of sending a detachment of the country’s elite Revolutionary Guard to help defend Maduro.

China and India continue to buy oil from Venezuela with foreign currency that is vital to Maduro’s success.

American attempts to discourage those efforts, as well as policies seeking to curb Chinese and Indian imports of Iranian oil, could backfire by hiking prices at gas pumps in the US, analysts told the New York Times.

Those pushbacks against American pressure are one reason Maduro remains in power and can continue to crush his critics, for example, when he banned the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, Juan Guaido, from running for office for 15 years.

If the Venezuelan military opted to withdraw its support of Maduro, he might lose power, but such a shift doesn’t appear likely, New York magazine noted. Still, the president is hedging against such a scenario. He’s expanding the paramilitary forces that directly serve him and act as intimidators or death squads at his behest.

Maduro also turns defeats into victories. After insisting the country didn’t face a humanitarian crisis despite empty supermarket shelves and shortages of medical supplies, the BBC reported, he recently let the Red Cross into the country. The move might have been equivalent to opening a safety valve, preventing an explosion.

The question is, how long can that safety valve work? And, if not much longer, how many more tricks do Maduro and his friends have up their sleeves to keep him in power?

Peru: A Shocking End

PERU

A Shocking End

Peru’s former President Alan García shot himself in the head and died Wednesday when police arrived at his home to arrest him on corruption charges.

It was a shocking end for a politician who had won Peru’s highest office twice before becoming embroiled in the probe into graft involving the construction giant Odebrecht that has shaken the corridors of power across the region, USA Today reported.

When the police arrived, García asked to be allowed to call his lawyer, then retreated to a bedroom on the pretext of doing so and closed the door. Moments later, the police heard a gunshot and forced their way into the room, Interior Minister Carlos Morán said.

Suspected of taking a bribe of more than $100,000 in the guise of a payment to speak at a conference in Brazil, García had insisted he was innocent and claimed that the case was politically motivated. He applied for asylum in Uruguay but he returned home four months ago when his request was rejected.

Mexico-Unclean Wounds

MEXICO

Unclean Wounds

Masked gunmen stormed a bus in northern Mexico in early March. Carrying a list of names, they abducted 19 passengers and disappeared. Mexican investigators still don’t know who the gunmen were, where they took the abductees or why they might have wanted passengers who appeared to be humble migrants heading to the US, CNN reported.

An estimated 40,000 people have fallen victim to enforced disappearances, torture, secret graves and other human rights violations in Mexico, according to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet. Some are victims of drug cartel violence or other criminals. Some are dissidents who crossed the wrong corrupt politicians.

More than four years ago, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College disappeared in southwestern Mexico. Their whereabouts are unknown. At a memorial ceremony for them last year, students and teachers lined up 43 chairs on a stage at the school, the New York Times reported.

An estimated 2,000 unmarked graves dot the countryside, too. Some families put up posters, like those who told NPR how their 71-year-old schoolteacher father disappeared without a trace. Other desperate Mexicans, tired of waiting for corrupt officials to do their jobs, assembled into “collectives” to find their lost loved ones.

“The collectives have relied on a simple technique to locate buried bodies,” wrote Human Rights Watch. “They hammer a metal rod into the ground at a suspected grave site. When the stench of death emerges, they know they have hit their mark.”

But often, after DNA testing, the families discover they’ve dug up someone else’s loved ones. Those remains number among some 26,000 unidentified bodies.

The crisis is emotional and political, argued Bachelet, a former president of Chile who was tortured under her country’s late dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Families can’t move on because they don’t know the fate of their loved ones. Without knowing their fate, they can’t seek justice.

“Wounds that are not clean will not heal,” Bachelet said at the conclusion of a recent visit to Mexico City. “The open wounds of the past, and those that persist in the present, demand truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-repetition.”

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a leftist who assumed office late last year, is trying to address the issue. He’s set up a Truth and Justice Commission to investigate the Ayotzinapa students’ disappearances. And he has been critical of the security services.

“There was a time in which the main violator of human rights was the state,” Lopez Obrador said recently, according to Reuters. “That’s over.”

One can’t blame Mexicans for not believing him until they know for sure.

Trump Administration Turns Over Massive Collection of Intelligence Records on Human Rights and Argentina | National Security Archive

Trump Administration Turns Over Massive Collection of Intelligence Records on Human Rights and Argentina | National Security Archive

Brasil: Rewriting History

BRAZIL

Rewriting History

The government of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro has rejected a call from the United Nations to clarify the country’s past, rejecting that the 1964 takeover of the government by the military was a coup d’etat.

In a letter to the UN human rights commission in Geneva made public on Thursday, Brazil repudiated “the baseless accusations” that Bolsonaro was attempting to downplay rights violations, Reuters reported.

“President Bolsonaro has reiterated his understanding that the 1964 movement was necessary to stave off the growing threat of a communist takeover of Brazil and to ensure the preservation of national institutions in the context of the Cold War,” the letter said.

On Sunday, Brazil’s armed forces celebrated the 1964 coup that led to a two-decade military dictatorship, following Bolsonaro’s decision to scrap an eight-year ban on such festivities.

The dictatorship executed hundreds, tortured thousands and shut down the Congress even as Bolsonaro appears to look back at the period with nostalgia, critics charge.

Venezuela: Nobody Is Immune

VENEZUELA

Nobody’s Immune

Venezuela’s Constituent Assembly on Tuesday stripped opposition leader Juan Guaido of his parliamentary immunity, raising the specter of an imminent arrest.

Loyal to President Nicolas Maduro, the Constituent Assembly voted unanimously to strip Guaido of his immunity from prosecution following a Supreme Court order to do so: Guaido had ignored a warning not to leave the country while he remains under investigation, reported Germany-based Deutsche Welle.

It’s not clear if Maduro will seek his arrest – not least because of the public outcry likely to result. Under Venezuela’s constitution, the opposition-controlled National Assembly would have to approve the decision to strip Guaido of his immunity to make it valid.

Since declaring himself president on the grounds that Maduro’s recent re-election was a farce, Guaido has been recognized as the country’s legitimate leader by roughly 50 countries around the world.

Following the loss of his immunity, he dismissed the high court and Constituent Assembly as Maduro’s stooges, and continued his calls for the president to step down.