Welcome again to Overseas Coverage’s Latin America Temporary.
The highlights this week: El Salvador scraps presidential time period limits, Ecuador hosts the ladies’s Copa América, and housing points at COP30 put strain on Brazil.
Nayib Bukele’s focus of energy in El Salvador is a well-known story by now. Since taking workplace in 2019, the Salvadoran president has suspended due course of rights within the title of combating crime, finishing up mass arrests of individuals stated to be suspected gang members and jailing critics.
Nonetheless, Bukele’s recognition has remained excessive, largely as a result of murder charges have dropped throughout his tenure. His legislative majority in 2021 moved to swap out most judges in El Salvador’s prime courtroom, which then dominated that Bukele might run for a second time period regardless of a constitutional ban on consecutive reelection. He was reelected final yr.
On July 31, the legislature took a dramatic step towards doubtlessly prolonging Bukele’s rule, approving a constitutional reform to scrap presidential time period limits completely. The reform additionally lengthens presidential phrases from 5 to 6 years and permits candidates to win elections with only a plurality—relatively than a majority—of votes, eliminating the necessity for a runoff.
Most democracies all over the world have time period limits for his or her presidents. The Latin American nations which have eliminated them in recent times—Venezuela via a referendum and Nicaragua via the courtroom, each in 2009—grew to become deeply autocratic.
When Venezuela held the plebiscite to do away with time period limits, it was criticized by some pro-democracy watchdogs. The Inter-American Fee on Human Rights (IACHR), which is a part of the Group of American States (OAS), would ultimately challenge an opinion saying that abolishing time period limits poses a danger to democracy. In recent times, the IACHR has grow to be fast to challenge statements of concern after main episodes of democratic backsliding within the area.
El Salvador “goes down the identical path as Venezuela,” Juanita Goebertus, a director on the Human Rights Watch, posted on social media final week. “It begins with a pacesetter who makes use of their recognition to pay attention energy, after which it finishes in a dictatorship.”
The OAS and IACHR have been unusually quiet, nevertheless. Member nations’ wariness of antagonizing U.S. President Donald Trump has produced a chilling impact on the OAS, stated a senior diplomat accustomed to the group, who spoke to Overseas Coverage on the situation of anonymity to debate a delicate topic.
The Trump administration has relied on Bukele to simply accept and detain deportees in a infamous megaprison. The White Home this week endorsed El Salvador’s reform, calling it “democratically primarily based and constitutionally sound.” Up to now, Washington has condemned prolonged presidential phrases within the area.
Individually, the Washington Put up reported on Wednesday that the U.S. State Division is getting ready to sharply reverse its latest criticism of El Salvador’s human rights document in an upcoming report. A draft seen by the Put up said that there are “no credible reviews of serious human rights abuses” within the nation.
America funds round half of the OAS and is at present reviewing its help, fueling hypothesis that Trump may depart the group completely. The potential finish of U.S. backing for the OAS “is being held over the group’s head just like the sword of Damocles,” the diplomat stated. Some OAS member states, corresponding to Canada and Mexico, are additionally nonetheless attempting to speak Trump down from tariffs.
Along with the group’s silence on El Salvador, the OAS has not too long ago held again from denouncing Trump’s threats towards Brazil over its prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally.
On Wednesday, the OAS issued a declaration voicing its dedication to battle local weather change. However a handful of nations held again from co-sponsoring—together with Brazil, which is internet hosting the United Nations’ annual local weather convention later this yr. Most nations from the hemisphere signed on as co-sponsors.
America added a footnote to the declaration, calling it “basically flawed” and inspiring the OAS to “focus its time, consideration, and sources on issues that each one member states can help.”
A possible U.S. exit from the OAS doesn’t simply fear diplomats from Latin America and the Caribbean. Frank Mora, a former U.S. ambassador to the physique, wrote in Americas Quarterly final week that such a transfer would make “the U.S. deaf to the hemisphere’s conversations and blind to its crises, whereas inviting others to write down the script”—an implicit nod to China.
Tuesday, Aug. 12, to Friday, Aug. 15: Mexico hosts a U.N. convention on the standing of ladies in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Sunday, Aug. 17: Bolivia holds basic elections.
Commerce tremors. Heightened U.S. tariffs on Latin American nations are already affecting companies throughout the area, with Brazil’s espresso exporters and Mexico’s auto producers warning this previous week that costs will rise for U.S. shoppers. The president of the Mexican Auto Business Affiliation stated the present 25 p.c auto tariff on the nation is “unsustainable,” together with for U.S. firms that depend on inputs from Mexico.
Canadian and Mexican officers held a assembly on Aug. 5 to coordinate commerce methods on Trump’s tariffs. Canada didn’t obtain the identical non permanent reprieve from levies that Mexico did final week.
In the meantime, Brazilian officers have been learning the opportunity of a crucial minerals take care of america to de-escalate commerce and political tensions. However hostilities spiked once more after Brazil’s Supreme Court docket put Bolsonaro underneath home arrest for violating a social media ban. Trump has known as the courtroom’s trial of Bolsonaro on tried coup costs “a witch hunt.”
Assisted loss of life diary. A couple of nations in Latin America permit medically assisted loss of life in sure circumstances of terminal or extreme sickness. However even in these nations, accessing the service will be sophisticated.
A Colombian public well being professional raised consciousness of these challenges over the previous yr via a sequence of newspaper columns that chronicled her personal selection of medically assisted loss of life following a most cancers analysis. In Tatiana Andia’s columns, she “took her nation together with her,” the New York Occasions wrote this week.
Andia was recognized with lung most cancers on the age of 43 and wrote publicly about what she would—and wouldn’t—settle for on the finish of her life. She fought previous stigma and paperwork to make her assisted loss of life plan. Andia ultimately wrote in her columns that the method was much more advanced than she had imagined.
By the point she died in February 2024, writing that she was bowing out “with dignity,” the entire nation was following alongside. Her loss of life was nationwide information.
Brazilian soccer participant Marta Vieira da Silva celebrates Brazil’s win over Colombia within the ladies’s Copa América finals in Quito, Ecuador, on Aug. 2.Franklin Jacome/Getty Photographs
Girls’s Copa América. Ecuador hosted the ladies’s model of the South American regional soccer match over the previous month. It culminated in a ultimate match on Aug. 2 between Colombia and Brazil. The 2 groups fought to a 4-4 tie, which Brazil received in penalty kicks. Each groups have now earned spots on the 2028 Summer season Olympics in Los Angeles.
The ultimate included a number of the most dazzling soccer performed within the area this yr. Brazil’s Marta, on the twilight of her worldwide profession, pushed the sport to additional time with a late aim within the second half.
The match additionally highlighted long-standing pay inequities between women and men’s soccer. The crew that received the lads’s match in 2024 collectively obtained $16 million; this yr’s ladies’s champions received $1.5 million.
Each ladies’s Copa América since 2010 has ended with Brazil and Colombia within the prime two spots—apart from in 2018. Which nationwide crew was the runner-up that yr?
Argentina
Chile
Ecuador
Uruguay
Chile by no means performed a ultimate match towards winner Brazil as a result of the outcomes of the 2018 match had been decided by factors relatively than a playoff sport.
A person walks previous an infrastructure venture underway for COP30 in Belém, Brazil, on June 16.Carlos Fabal/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
In three months, Brazil will host this yr’s U.N. local weather convention. It will likely be a significant check of multilateralism in an period when the Trump administration is attempting to tear it down.
Proper now, nevertheless, controversy is swirling round a difficulty that will seem extra logistical: housing.
The occasion will happen within the Amazonian metropolis of Belém, which has a metropolitan space of some 2.5 million individuals. The U.N. presents a day by day stipend of round $150 for negotiators from poorer nations to be housed. However in latest months, the housing on supply—a mixture of accommodations and personal properties—has been scarce and prohibitively costly for attendees.
One so-called “love motel” in Belém, which {couples} usually lease by the hour and which options suggestive decorations corresponding to large mirrors close to the mattress, was listed on a rental website as $570 per evening relatively than its typical value of $6 per hour.
International locations have been urging the Brazilian authorities to intervene for months. African, Latin American, and small island state negotiators known as an emergency assembly final week to think about shifting the convention to a different metropolis if present costs don’t change. The housing prices in Belém might drive them to dramatically shrink their delegations, they stated; at its core, the housing challenge was about what sort of voices get to be heard on the summit.
Final week, Brazilian authorities launched a platform designed to assist discover housing in Belém at extra affordable charges. Convention attendees noticed some value decreases. The U.N. has scheduled a follow-up assembly on the matter subsequent week.
