A Test For Brasil's President

 

A test for Brazil’s president

We reported yesterday that Brazilian senators voted to recommend “crimes against humanity” charges against President Jair Bolsonaro for his handling of the pandemic, the first major legal challenge of its kind against a world leader.

“After a six-month investigation, they concluded that Bolsonaro had essentially allowed the coronavirus to tear through Brazil on purpose to try to reach herd immunity,” said our colleague Jack Nicas, a Times correspondent in Brazil.

Bolsonaro, a strident right-wing populist, has long downplayed the virus. He discouraged masks, encouraged large gatherings and vocally promoted unproven drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

“A lot of the things that are being discussed in the report, he did openly,” Jack said. “This was not a secret plot, but something that has been part of his public pronouncements from the beginning of the pandemic.”

The findings have split Brazil, which was already a deeply divided country. Some, following Bolsonaro’s lead, consider the panel to be a politically motivated sham. For many others, the televised hearings were cathartic in a country where more than 606,000 people have died from the coronavirus — the most recorded deaths in the world after the U.S.

“His poll numbers have spiraled as the death count has risen,” Jack added. “A large part of the country sees the panel as one of the only institutions that is trying to hold the government responsible for its mishandling of the pandemic.”

After several devastating surges, Brazil currently has the coronavirus under control: New cases and deaths have dropped dramatically as vaccinations have risen. Now, about 56 percent of people in Brazil are fully vaccinated. (In the U.S., it’s 57 percent.)

Bolsonaro, who contracted the virus earlier in the pandemic, is unvaccinated, and vocally so.

Few expect the Senate recommendations to result in criminal charges right away. Bolsonaro appointed the attorney general, who has 30 days to review the report and decide whether to press charges.

But once Bolsonaro leaves office, Jack told us, “this could become a legal headache for him down the road.” The panel’s leaders said they also plan to send the report to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The more immediate question, though, is the fate of Bolsonaro’s social media accounts.

Last week in a livestream, Bolsonaro suggested that the Covid vaccine could cause AIDS — a false claim that led YouTube and Facebook to remove the video. In their final report, the senators also asked the Supreme Court to order tech firms to ban him from social media for the “protection of the population.”

Bolsonaro tried to restrict tech companies from removing any posts, including his own, about the coronavirus and election fraud. But the courts and Congress dismissed the order.

“It certainly resembles the fight over Donald Trump’s Twitter account,” Jack told us. “President Bolsonaro is concerned about the risk of losing his access to social media, because it has been a crucial channel for him to connect to voters and be able to circumvent the press.”

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Bolsonaro-Crimes Against Humanity?????

 

The Shades of Accountability

BRAZIL

A Brazilian Senate committee recommended President Jair Bolsonaro be charged with crimes against humanity and other charges over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Axios reported Wednesday.

The 11-member committee voted seven to four in favor of the charges, which included crimes against humanity, misuse of public funds and “charlatanism.” The report’s lead author, Senator Renan Calheiros, accused the far-right president of being “on the side” of dictators.

The vote follows the closure of a six-month investigation into Bolsonaro’s response to the pandemic: The populist leader has been accused of continuously underplaying the severity of the pandemic and has spoken out against lockdowns, masks and vaccinations.

The Senate report holds him responsible for many of Brazil’s more than 600,000 coronavirus-related deaths – the second-highest death toll after the United States worldwide.

The case is expected to go to Prosecutor-General Augusto Aras, who will determine whether to pursue the charges. Aras is a Bolsonaro appointee and is widely viewed as someone who will shield the president from prosecution.

Meanwhile, the charges of crimes against humanity will need to be pursued by the International Criminal Court, according to the Associated Press.

Colombia-Target Machismo

 

Target: Machismo

COLOMBIA

Colombia’s capital, Bogota, has introduced a new hotline to help men struggling with issues around machismo while challenging long-held beliefs about masculinity, a move aimed at fighting domestic abuse and violence against women by putting men front and center, the New York Times reported.

Known as the Calm Line, the hotline has dozens of psychologists who respond to male callers about issues such as jealousy, control and fear – including instances when they hurt their partner. The line is open to all men, regardless of sexuality, relationship status or whether they are cisgender and transgender.

Introduced in September, the line is a project by Bogota’s liberal and openly gay mayor, Claudia López, who has made stopping violence against women a priority. She believes that the root causes such as machismo – the ingrained belief that men must be dominant – must be addressed to alleviate the problem.

Analysts said that the line is hoped to inspire significant cultural change in Colombia, where a woman is sexually assaulted every 34 minutes, according to government data.

Supporters of the line noted that punishing abusers through the criminal justice system does not always address the root cause of the problem the way prevention and education do.

To get the word out about the Calm Line, the government is using the media and social media but also a television miniseries about four male friends supporting each other as they struggle with anger and control issues.

The creation of the line comes as women in Latin America are increasingly demanding the dissolution of societal norms that have limited their personal and professional lives even as they make strides in higher education, business and politics, the newspaper wrote.

An Amnesty For Illegally Imported Cars In Mexico

 

Chocoholics

MEXICO

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered amnesty to the owners of millions of American cars that have been illegally imported from the United States since the 1990s, a move that has received both praise and condemnation in the uproar that followed the announcement, the Washington Post reported.

The president’s decision would allow owners of the colloquially known “chocolate cars” to pay about $120 to make their vehicle legal. López Obrador said the revenue will be used for roads.

Chocolate cars – believed to be a play of the term “chueco” (crooked in English) – make up more than a third of all automobiles in Mexico. These cars have been big business for the illicit car markets in Mexico’s northern states.

Because of Mexican taxes and registration fees, a used car purchased legally in Mexico can cost more than twice as much as the same model imported illegally from the US. That has helped the poor and the middle-class access automobiles.

But the vehicles are untaxed, have no import permits and are usually sold under market value. Because they are unregistered, many of them have been used by criminal organizations.

Previous attempts to block the crossing of illegal cars have been halfhearted. At the same time, previous amnesties proved complicated and expensive for many owners.

Many chocolate car owners and the organizations defending them hailed the president’s decision. Owners can now replace the expired US license plates with Mexican ones.

Even so, critics and car lobby groups denounced the move as “a prize for the mafia,” noting that the amnesty was rewarding illegal behavior, instead of resolving it. They added that the reform rewards criminal groups that generate income from the illegal importation and sale of cars, which now is likely to lead to increased sales.

The amnesty program only applies to vehicles that entered the country before López Obrador signed the decree but analysts cautioned that the cutoff is unlikely to be enforced.

Major Colombian Drug Cartel Leader Captured!

 

Out Goes the King

COLOMBIA

Colombian authorities captured Dairo Antonio Usuga, the country’s most-wanted drug trafficker, over the weekend in an arrest that has been likened to the operation that brought down notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar three decades ago, Al Jazeera reported.

Security forces detained the leader of the Gulf Clan – better known as Otoniel – in the rural area of the northern Uraba region.

President Ivan Duque said Otoniel’s capture “marks the end of the Gulf Clan,” adding that his government was working to extradite him to the United States.

The drug kingpin was first indicted in 2009 in a Manhattan federal court on drug trafficking charges. He also faces other criminal charges in the US, including the continuous operation of a criminal enterprise and the use of firearms in drug trafficking.

Authorities have been trying to capture Otoniel for years. Meanwhile, his capture comes as Colombia’s security forces are slowly losing hold of rural areas to armed gangs.

Human Rights Watch praised Otoniel’s arrest, saying that the leader “must be held accountable for the hundreds of crimes committed under his command.”

Even so, analysts and human rights advocates worry that Otoniel’s capture will leave a vacuum in the criminal organization, which will lead to in-fighting and more violence.

They noted how that occurred after the 1993 killing of Escobar and the 2016 capture of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the former leader of the Mexican Sinaloa cartel.

Chile: The Mapuches Demand Their Land Back

 

Read the Room

CHILE

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera declared a state of emergency and sent troops to two southern regions this week where the Mapuche indigenous people have been clashing with security forces over ancestral land issues, Agence France-Presse reported.

Pinera said Tuesday that the regions had experienced “repeated acts of violence linked to drug-trafficking, terrorism and organized crime committed by armed groups,” adding that police and civilians have been killed in the clashes.

The unrest comes as Mapuche leaders are demanding the return of their ancestral lands currently owned by farms and logging companies. The Mapuche predominately live in the country’s south and are Chile’s largest indigenous group, about 1.7 million in a population of 19 million.

The issue of ancestral land has lingered for years and has prompted some groups to launch attacks on trucks and private properties over the past few decades.

On Sunday, one person was killed and 17 others injured when clashes broke out in the capital, Santiago, between authorities and protesters marching for Mapuche autonomy.

Analyst Lucia Dammert criticized Pinera’s decision, which came on the national holiday that marks the “discovery” of the Americas by Christopher Columbus.

The holiday is controversial among Indigenous groups throughout the Americas, who view Columbus’ arrival and subsequent colonization as a disaster.

The Terrible State Of Women's Health In Brasil

 

#LivreParaMenstruar

BRAZIL

Brazilian politicians and women’s rights groups expressed outrage over a decision by President Jair Bolsonaro this week to veto a bill that would provide free pads and tampons to disadvantaged women and girls, the Guardian reported.

The bill would have benefited 5.6 million women, including homeless females, prisoners and teenage girls at state schools. It was part of a bigger package of laws aimed at promoting menstrual health in a country where period poverty is estimated to keep one in four girls out of school.

Bolsonaro said that parts of the bill were “against public interest” and that giving free sanitary products to poor women would “favor a certain group.”

Federal Deputy Tabata Amaral admonished the president for his decision, saying that Bolsonaro was showing his “contempt for the dignity of vulnerable women” by vetoing the plan. She said she would work to overturn the veto.

Other politicians and activists also criticized the veto, while many social media users expressed their outrage using the hashtag #LivreParaMenstruar – meaning “free to menstruate” in Portuguese.

Amaral said that Bolsonaro’s move means the health ministry will have to pay for the treatment and surgeries resulting from complications of the use of towels and old clothing by women unable to afford tampons and pads.

In May, a report issued by the United Nations found that more than 700,000 girls in the country do not have access to a bathroom, while about four million lack adequate hygiene facilities at school.

A Llama's Gift Could Cure Coronavirus

 

A Llama’s Gift

The secret to beating the coronavirus might lie inside a llama, according to a new study.

British scientists recently developed a Covid treatment using llama “nanobodies” that could be administered to humans through a simple nasal spray, the BBC reported.

Nanobodies are a smaller and simpler version of antibodies that llamas and camels produce naturally in response to infection. These types of antibodies can grab onto pathogens that invade organisms and tag them with an immune “red flag.” This then prompts the immune system to respond against the invader.

In their new study, researchers injected a non-infectious viral protein into Fifi the llama in order to stimulate her immune system. Once her immunity kicked in, the team took a sample of Fifi’s blood and picked out the strongest nanobodies – in this case, the ones that closely matched with the viral protein.

They then grew a large quantity of the special nanobodies, which they later used on coronavirus-infected rodents via a nasal spray. The novel treatment caused animals to recover in a matter of days. Public Health England called the treatment one of the “most effective SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing agents.”

Even so, the simple spray needs to be tested in humans to determine its effectiveness. Still, other scientists said the treatment is “very promising nonetheless and the fact it may be cheaper and easier to administer is a plus.”

Peru: The Death Of A Salesman

 

PERU

Peru will cremate the remains of Abimael Guzmán, the founder of the Shining Path rebel group that caused tens of thousands of deaths in the South American country in the 1980s and 1990s. Guzmán died in prison on Sept.11 at the age of 86. An ex-philosophy professor and Maoist revolutionary, he was serving a life sentence on treason and terrorism charges.

As Reuters explained, the fate of his body after his death has been controversial. Peruvian authorities did not want to bury the late terrorist out of fear of creating a shrine for some who might see him as a martyr. His widow, who is still in jail on treason and terrorism charges, wanted to have his ashes but her request was denied.

Shining Path was one of many insurgencies in Latin American from the 1970s through the 1990s that began as an effort to enact leftist policies to help the poor, small farmers and others but evolved into a fighting operation. It, however, was “a totalitarian outlier, a Maoist cult of personality constructed to glorify Guzmán’s messianic fantasies,” wrote the New Yorker. On Mao’s birthday in 1980, for instance, Guzman ordered his followers to kill and mutilate street dogs in protest of then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s tolerance of free markets.

The public debate over the cremation illustrates how Peru is still grappling with the legacy of one of Latin America’s bloodiest rebel conflicts. “What is Guzmán’s place in the history of Peru?” asked Carlos Meléndez, a political analyst at Diego Portales University in Chile, in the Washington Post. “Without statues, without tombs, without pilgrimage sites, what will be the symbolism with which we bury Guzmán in Peru’s history?”

He noted that the reckoning with the past has yet to occur: The violence is “something that we as Peruvians have not yet collectively processed,” he said. “Many of the ingredients that caused the Shining Path to explode are still present.”

Ironically, Guzmán lived long enough to see the first Marxist-Leninist president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, assume power in July, no mean feat in a country which has, thanks to Shining Path, often demonized the left. Guzmán’s acolytes are members of Castillo’s cabinet and serve in the Peruvian Congress, noted a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. Castillo has been pushing to concentrate power in his office and install more Shining Path leaders throughout government, too.

Around 40 percent of Peruvians believe that some top officials harbor sympathies for the Shining Path, according to polls cited in the Rio Times, an English-language newspaper based in Brazil. Critics are waiting with “knives out” to stop Castillo if he missteps, wrote Jacobin, a leftwing news magazine. The president, meanwhile, faces poor odds. Peru has had four presidents since 2016. Prosecutors have charged three with corruption. A fourth committed suicide before his trial, Le Monde Diplomatique noted.

Still, Castillo condemned Guzmán’s violence after his death, distancing himself, perhaps, from the revolutionary’s worst impulses, Americas Quarterly wrote. But as the publication noted, that a leftist president now leads Peru shows how much the country has already moved on.