Ecuador: Divided We Stand

ECUADOR

Divided We Stand

Some Ecuadorian lawmakers criticized the national assembly on Wednesday for rejecting a reform bill that would decriminalize abortion in cases of rape.

“The debate over abortion for rape was not in vain. Today society knows that in Ecuador, raped women are criminalized,” lawmaker Wilma Andrade said, according to the Guardian.

The comments follow clashes between pro-choice activists and police outside the country’s national assembly after the proposed bill – which also permitted abortion in cases of incest and fetal malformation – fell five votes short of the 70 it needed to pass.

Activists argued that the decision amounts to a death sentence for those women forced to seek an illegal abortion: These resulted in 15.6 percent of all maternal deaths in 2014, according to the latest figures available.

Lawmakers have been debating reforming the draconian law for years, but the recent rejection underscored lingering divisions on the issue in the staunchly Catholic country.

The current law only allows for abortions in cases where the mother’s life is in danger, or if the pregnancy is the result of the rape of a mentally disabled woman.

Women who have the procedure face up to two years in prison.

Brasil: A New Front

BRAZIL

A New Front

Organized criminal networks are responsible for the deforestation of the Amazon and use violence and intimidation against those who try to stop them, according to a new Human Rights Watch report.

The 165-page report found that out of 300 murders in the Amazon in the past decade, only 14 were tried in court, Reuters reported.

“If the authorities had taken their complaints seriously, these people might be alive today,” Daniel Wilkinson, acting environment director of nonprofit group, told the news agency Tuesday.

Brazil’s Environment Minister Ricardo Salles responded that the government has fought against criminality, and is currently combating illegal fires and other environmental crimes that have plagued the rainforest in recent weeks.

The Amazon plays an important role in the fight against climate change, but the rainforest’s destruction has surged this year due to the fires.

Meanwhile, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has come under fire internationally for his policies that advocate opening the Amazon to development and the weakening of Brazil’s environmental enforcement agencies.

Guatemala-A Sad Last Hurrah

GUATEMALA

A Last, Sad Hurrah

Guatemalan police on Monday arrested former first lady and three-time presidential candidate Sandra Torres on charges of violating campaign finance rules following an investigation by a UN corruption commission that is being forced out after butting heads with the country’s political class.

Torres, who came in second during last month’s presidential election, was charged with “failing to register election financing, and unlawful association.”

Many in the country hailed the arrest – suspicions of corruption have dogged Torres for more than a decade.

She has denied all charges.

Her arrest comes one day before the closing of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) whose work has rocked Guatemala’s political class for 12 years: A CICIG investigation toppled President Otto Pérez Molina in 2015 and helped expose a complex multi-billion dollar corruption network, the Financial Times reported.

Her arrest and others announced this week are considered the final acts of the commission, Reuters reported.

Last year, outgoing president Jimmy Morales refused to renew its mandate and barred its chief, Iván Velásquez, from the country.

The new president-elect Alejandro Giammattei – who has also clashed with the commission – intends to replace the CICIG with a state commission, but hasn’t provided any specifics.

Chile Has Some Serious Problems

CHILE

Rats, Sewage and Humming Economies

Free marketers have long championed the economic success of Chile.

The South American country’s neo-liberal reforms in the 1980s and 1990s – cutting public benefits, lowering taxes – arguably set the stage for a renaissance that helped reduce poverty from 26 percent to less than 8 percent between 2000 and 2015, according to the World Bank.

But social upheaval has followed the slowdown of Chile’s export-oriented economy in the past year, especially as trade instability between China and the United States has suppressed the price of copper, a crucial local commodity, reported Al Jazeera. The worst drought in decades isn’t helping, added the Associated Press.

Around 80,000 teachers went on strike for seven weeks this summer, calling for structural changes in a system they said was not working anymore. Chilean law technically doesn’t cover education as a public right, leaving it instead to the private sector through a voucher system that hurts the poorest students, the left-wing magazine Jacobin explained. The teachers ended their strike in July but said they would keep fighting for reforms.

Students are also angry. Even at the elite National Institute in the capital of Santiago, the all-boy alma mater of numerous ex-presidents, students have staged protests against “rat infestations, blocked bathrooms with sewage leaking, cold showers, broken windows, leaking roofs and bullying teachers,” the BBC reported.

Confidence in the political system cratered in 2015, when the oldest son of then-President Michelle Bachelet was implicated in an insider trading and influence-peddling scandal, wrote Americas Quarterly. Bachelet responded by supporting major reforms to campaign finance and other rules governing elected officials.

Such improvements rarely quiet others seeking justice, however.

President Sebastián Piñera, a 69-year-old billionaire, assumed office 18 months ago. Since then, his critics say he has done little to address the many complaints of Chilean citizens about how their country operates. Piñera’s approval rating is now around 34 percent.

Meanwhile, relatives of around 1,100 people who disappeared during the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, for example, have been crying out for more information about their loved ones to no avail. Bachelet launched an investigation that is expected to yield results in two years. Many feel that Piñera isn’t doing anything to speed things up, the Guardian wrote.

Piñera also faces the uncomfortable task of overseeing prosecutions of accused sexual abusers within the Catholic church, Crux reported, including allegations against his uncle, Archbishop Bernardino Piñera.

In the current climate, reported Bloomberg, two young communist women lawmakers have proposed cutting the official workweek from 45 to 40 hours. Critics said the proposal would undermine productivity. The lawmakers, Camila Vallejo, 31, and Karol Cariola, 32, argued it would improve quality of life.

Economic indicators are important. They offer little, however, to those seeking justice and equality.

WAN

Brasil: Army Crackdown

BRAZIL

Army Crackdown

Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro responded to widespread international criticism of his management of the fires ravaging the Amazon rainforest by sending in the military on Saturday.

Bolsonaro deployed military aircraft and about 44,000 troops to fight the flames across six Brazilian states struggling to contain the fire, Vox reported.

The move came two weeks after the fires began, but almost immediately after French President Emmanuel Macron threatened to stymie a trade deal with a South American bloc that includes Brazil over Bolsonaro’s blase approach to the crisis, the news site noted.

Earlier, Bolsonaro blamed nonprofit organizations for starting the fires and claimed Brazil lacked adequate resources to fight them effectively. Though such fires occur regularly, they’re especially intense this year due to drought, extreme heat and deforestation, drawing comparisons to the large-scale forest fires that have hit Russia, Alaska, Greenland, California, and elsewhere this year.

Meanwhile, Bolsonaro has been busily working to roll back the country’s environmental protection policies, and its main environmental agency’s efforts to fight deforestation reduced dramatically over the first half of 2019, the New York Times reported.

H

Amazon Basin:

AMAZON BASIN

Gasping For Air

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been under fire for his stewardship of the precious Amazon Basin, the so-called “lungs of the Earth” that filter carbon out of the atmosphere and sustain a remarkably diverse ecology.

Deforestation has soared under the conservative president and former army captain who served under Brazil’s military junta in the 1970s and 1980s. Woodcutters cleared more than 1,620 square miles of Brazilian Amazon forest between Jan. 1, when Bolsonaro took office, and late July, wrote Science magazine. That’s 50 percent more than in the same seven-month period last year and double the amount lost in that period in 2017.

Bolsonaro has denied the veracity of the data, setting off debates in Brazil about fake news, the media and the frequent inclination among politicians to twist the truth. “Mr. Bolsonaro often makes spurious statements,” reported the New York Times in coverage of the president sacking the head of the agency that tracks deforestation in the Amazon.

Meanwhile, the Amazon has experienced a record number of fires this year, according to new data released by the country’s space agency, the National Institute for Space Research. The agency said its satellite data detected more than 72,000 fires since January, an 83 percent increase over the same period of 2018.

Recently, the president offered a novel solution to a dilemma posed by a journalist in Brasilia, the country’s capital. The journalist asked Bolsonaro whether it was possible to simultaneously grow the economy, feed the hungry and protect the environment.

“It’s enough to eat a little less,” the president said, according to Agence France-Presse. “You talk about environmental pollution. It’s enough to poop every other day. That will be better for the whole world.”

Writing in the Washington Post’s letter section, a Brazilian diplomat defended Bolsonaro’s policies, saying the government is developing a better system to monitor deforestation.

German officials weren’t convinced. They intend to stop paying aid to Brazil to fund conservation projects that might preserve trees, Deutsche Welle reported. Bolsonaro didn’t appear to care. “They can use this money as they see fit,” he said. “Brazil doesn’t need it.”

Brazil needs to take action, however. The world is on “deathwatch” for the Amazon, the Economist warned, explaining that ranching and agriculture were transforming the rainforest. “South America’s natural wonder may be perilously close to the tipping point beyond which its gradual transformation into something closer to steppe cannot be stopped or reversed, even if people lay down their axes,” the British magazine wrote.

The Amazon continues to educate humanity. Researchers, for example, recently discovered that the Amazon acquires a vital nutrient – phosphorus – from smoke that wafts across the Atlantic Ocean from fires in Africa, the New Scientist reported.

That’s knowledge that makes the pronouncements of presidents seem small in comparison.

Gasping for Air

Argentina: The Meltdown Continues

ARGENTINA

The Meltdown Continues

Argentina’s economy minister Nicolas Dujovne resigned Saturday in an apparent effort to help President Mauricio Macri sidestep some of the blame for the country’s current financial crisis following the stunning defeat he suffered in last week’s primary election.

Dujovne said in a statement that Macri’s economic team needed “significant renewal,” the BBC reported, noting that the peso plunged 20 percent against the dollar following Macri’s defeat. “I believe my resignation is in keeping with my place in a government that listens to the people and acts accordingly,” Dujovne said.

For his part, Macri has already unveiled income tax cuts, boosted welfare subsidies and frozen fuel prices for 90 days to woo back voters disillusioned with his austerity program.

Meanwhile, opposition candidate Alberto Fernandez – Macri’s nominal opponent alongside former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is running as vice-president – said Sunday he would seek to renegotiate the terms of the $57 billion stand-by agreement that Macri inked with the International Monetary Fund in 2018.