Daily Headlines: November 3, 2016

* United States: The latest Latino Decision tracking poll estimates that as many as 14.7 million Latinos will vote in elections this month, which would represent a 5% jump compared to the turnout rate for the prior presidential election in 2012.

* Argentina: Representatives at the recent Ibero-American summit backed Argentina’s claim to the Falklands Islands while also supporting a United Nations resolution for dialogue with Britain over the disputed archipelago.

* Nicaragua: The final national survey prior to this Sunday’s presidential election indicates that incumbent Daniel Ortega and his running mate, first lady Rosario Murillo, will easily triumph.

* Brazil: Volkswagen appointed a German university professor to look into claims of torture and human rights abuses against the automaker’s employees in Brazil during military rule from 1964 to 1985.

YouTube Source – CBS Sunday Morning (Video uploaded on October 2016). 

Online Sources – Huffington Post, MercoPress, Reuters, BBC News

Daily Headlines: October 25, 2016

* Bolivia: A new scientific report found that glaciers in Bolivia have shrunk by 43% from 1986 to 2014 and “glacier recession is leaving lakes that could burst and wash away villages or infrastructure downstream.”

* Brazil: Aircraft manufacturer Embraer agreed to pay $205 million and officially claim responsibility in order to settle numerous corruption investigations in Brazil and the United States.

* Haiti: According to the United Nations heavy rainfall over the last few days has impeded the distribution of food and medicinal aid to areas of Haiti devastated by Hurricane Matthew.

* United States: An “unprecedented” number of Latinos have reportedly cast their ballots in early voting in Florida but is this a sign of a large Latino turnout on Election Day in two weeks time?

YouTube Source – Deutsche Welle (Video uploaded in 2010).

Online Sources – Science Daily, Xinhua, The Atlantic, Bloomberg

Daily Headlines: October 21, 2016

* Brazil: Twenty-one mining executives were charged with homicide in relation to the November 2015 collapse of a Brazilian dam that killed nineteen people and polluted miles of waterways.

* Latin America: A Mexican judge rejected an appeal to prevent the extradition of imprisoned Sinaloa drug cartel chief Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, while Argentine officials requested the extradition of an ex-Iranian foreign minister potentially involved in the deadly 1994 AMIA bombing.

* Nicaragua: A recent poll gave President Daniel Ortega a commanding lead in a presidential race marred by controversy over the removal of opposition politicos from the legislature.

* United States: The Organization of American States for the first time will send observers to monitor the United States presidential election in fifteen states including Georgia and Ohio.

YouTube Source – CCTV News 

Online Sources – Fox News Latino, teleSUR English, Business Insider, Yahoo News, UPI

Daily Headlines: October 20, 2016

* Latin America: Latin America has become “one of the most urbanized regions of the world” over the past three decades, according to Development Bank of Latin America executive president Enrique Garcia.

* South America: Former Brazilian lower house chief Eduardo Cunha was arrested yesterday over his alleged role in the “Lava Jato” corruption scandal, while Venezuelan opposition figure Manuel Rosales was transferred from jail to house arrest.

* Mexico: The Mexican peso slipped by around 0.5% following the third United States presidential debate though is has strengthened by some 7% since the first debate on September 7th.

* Honduras: Human rights campaigners condemned the murders of two northern Honduras land rights activists representing farmers in their dispute against multinational firms.

YouTube Source – NYU Stern Urbanization Project (From 2014: “The expansion of built up urban land in São Paulo, 1881 - 2000.”)

Online Sources – Xinhua, Bloomberg, UPI, BBC News, Reuters

Daily Headlines: October 17, 2016

* United States: A poll of likely Latino voters conducted last week has respondents giving Hillary Clinton a fifty point cushion over Donald Trump in a four-way race for the United States presidency.

* Honduras: The White House gave the green light for $55 million in aid to Honduras despite reservations by the Obama administration over rampant corruption and narcotrafficking.

* Ecuador: “I cannot disclose any information,” said a contact at the Ecuadoran embassy in London when asked if internet access to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was purportedly cut off.

* Puerto Rico: A new federal oversight board monitoring Puerto Rico’s public finances granted themselves more powers, while outgoing governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla warned that the commonwealth could face a $59 billion public debt over the next ten years.

YouTube Source – PBS NewsHour 

Online Sources – Bloomberg, Fox News Latino, BBC News, Politico

Daily Headlines: September 27, 2016

* Colombia: “In the name of the FARC, I sincerely apologize to all the victims of the conflict for any pain we may have caused during this war,” admitted rebel commander alias Timochenko as he and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos signed a historic peace deal yesterday.

* Mexico: The Mexican peso, which has hit record lows over the last past week, has sharply rebounded following the United States (US) presidential debate on Monday night.

* Argentina: In a surprising move, former Argentina men’s national team coach Gerardo Martino was named as manager of Major League Soccer expansion club Atlanta United.

* Venezuela: According to a State Department spokesman, US Secretary of State John Kerry “spoke of our concern about the economic and political challenges that have affected millions of Venezuelans” after meeting President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela.

YouTube Source – AFP (“Colombia's leftist FARC rebel force signed a historic peace accord with the government bringing the country a step closer to ending their half-century civil war.”)

Online Sources – Goal.com, Reuters, SBS, Fox News Latino

Daily Headlines: July 1, 2016

* El Salvador: Around 300 protesters marched to the residence of El Salvador’s president and called for better prison conditions for inmates including suspected gang members targeted in a security crackdown.

* Brazil: The head of Brazil’s anti-doping agency was replaced though the sports ministry claimed it had nothing to do with the suspension of its Rio de Janeiro laboratory weeks before the start of the Olympics.

* Latin America: “We cannot remain frozen in the face of a decision that could be difficult and catastrophic,” said Mexico’s economics secretary in reference to the possible aftermath of this year’s U.S. presidential election.

* Colombia: Thirty-three people were arrested and eleven tons of cocaine seized in a joint counternarcotics operation involving Italian and Colombian authorities.

YouTube Source – CCTV Americas Now (From December 2012: An “in-depth look at the issue of prison overcrowding in El Salvador, where many are packed into penitentiaries way beyond their limits forced to live a life of filth.”)

Online Sources – The Washington Post, Yahoo Finance, Reuters, MercoPress

Daily Headlines: May 11, 2016

* Brazil: The Brazilian Senate later today will likely approve holding an impeachment trial against embattled President Dilma Rousseff where she would be suspended from her post for 180 days.

* Colombia: President Juan Manuel Santos claimed that a peace deal with FARC rebels can be reached “in the very near future” hours after his predecessor, Alvaro Uribe, called for a “civil resistance” against such an agreement. 

* Nicaragua: A new study blasted planned construction of an interoceanic canal though Nicaragua, which would be disastrous for a number of endangered wildlife species.

* Peru: Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of imprisoned ex-president Alberto Fujimori, continues to post a slight lead in the polls ahead of next month’s runoff.

* U.S.: At least 875,000 eligible Latino voters could face difficulties voting in the upcoming presidential election according to an analysis by National Association of Elected and Appointed Officials.

* El Salvador: The murder rate for El Salvador in the first four months of this year has reportedly surpassed the rates in other Central American countries for 2015.

YouTube Source – AFP
 
Online Sources – Fox News Latino, Colombia Reports, CNN, Reuters, The Tico Times, NBC News

Daily Headlines: March 16, 2016

* Argentina: The lower chamber of the Argentine federal legislature approved a package to repay creditors in a legal tug-of-war with the government over some $100 billion in debt related to the country’s 2001 default.

* U.S.: Will recently retired presidential hopeful Marco Rubio provide a boost to fellow Cuban-American Senator Ted Cruz in his aspirations for the White House?

* Puerto Rico: Acclaimed Broadway composer Lin-Manuel Miranda urged Congress to take urgent action to help debt-ridden Puerto Rico though legislators have largely waffled on the issue.

* Mexico: The governor of the Mexican state of Guerrero, Hector Astudillo, suggested enacting a “pilot scheme” to allow the cultivation of opium poppies as a measure to combat drug violence.

YouTube Source – euronews (Last month “Argentina has agreed in principle to a deal with US hedge funds ending a 15-year-old dispute over its failure to repay billions of dollars worth of bonds.”)
 
Online Sources – Reuters, BBC News, Vox, The Huffington Post

Daily Headlines: February 3, 2016

* Haiti: In an unusual twist in Haiti’s electoral crisis, musician turned president Michel Martelly released a song criticizing his political rivals that includes “sexually suggestive lyrics” against “an award-winning female journalist.”

* Argentina: The Argentine Congress is expected to approve a deal to pay $1.35 billion to Italian creditors holding unpaid debt related to a record $100 billion default in 2002.

* U.S.: Approximately 10,500 Latinos are believed to have voted in the Iowa presidential caucuses last Monday, which far outnumbers the 1000 from four years ago and triple the participation in 2008.

* El Salvador: Is San Salvador truly the world’s most violent city instead of Caracas, Venezuela?

YouTube Source – TRT World 

Online Sources – InSight Crime, Voice of America, Buzzfeed, Reuters

Daily Headlines: January 25, 2016

* Haiti: “We are ready for war…we will divide the country,” declared former coup plotter and suspected drug smuggler Guy Philippe over the chaos resulting from the latest delay in the Haitian presidential elections.

* Ecuador: Chevron welcomed a judicial ruling at The Hague against Ecuador in relation to a years-long environmental damages lawsuit.

* El Salvador: Former Salvadoran President Francisco Flores is hospitalized under a coma and reportedly in critical condition after he was found unconscious in his home last night.

* U.S.: Latino rights groups such as LULAC are trying to push Iowa’s growing Hispanic population to participate in the February 1st presidential caucuses.

YouTube Source – euronews

Online Sources – Al Jazeera America, The Latin Americanist, Fox News Latino, NPR, teleSUR English

Daily Headlines: August 24, 2015

* Guatemala: During a televised speech on Sunday night, a defiant President Otto Pérez Molina refused to step down from his post despite being implicated by investigators in a growing customs fraud scandal.

* Peru: President Ollanta Humala is expected to sign into law a proposal allowing the Peruvian military to shoot down suspected aircraft attempting to smuggle drugs.

* El Salvador: “An internal dispute involving the feared Barrio 18 gang” is believed to have been the cause of a prison riot that left at least fourteen people dead.

* U.S.: A recent survey found that the environment is a topic that has gained importance among potential Latino voters.

YouTube Source – teleSUR English (“Thousands of demonstrators demanded the ouster of Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina on Saturday following the arrest of Vice President Roxana Baldetti in a graft scandal that has rocked the country.”)

Online Sources – Bloomberg, The Indpendent, RTE, NPR

Daily Headlines: March 31, 2015

* Argentina: Small British energy firms are reportedly still interested in offshore oil exploration near the Falklands despite the plummeting price of crude and heightened diplomatic tensions with Argentina.

* Venezuela: Ex-Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and ex-Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González are the latest former Ibero-American leaders to support imprisoned Venezuelan opposition activists.

* U.S.: Could Marco Rubio soon become the second Latino senator to launch a bid for the U.S. presidency?

* Bolivia: President Evo Morales blamed corruption scandals for his political party suffering losses in this month’s local elections.

YouTube Source – Financial Times (Video uploaded in 2012).
 
Online Sources – MercoPress, The Guardian, Politico, ABC News

Daily Headlines: September 16, 2014

* Mexico: A Mexican politician has come under fire after posting a Facebook message referring to Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho as an “ape.”

* Brazil: The warden of a Brazilian prison where an inmate was recently beheaded was arrested and charged with helping prisoners escape.

* U.S.: A coalition of fifty groups commenced a campaign yesterday aimed at boosting the number of Latino voters participating in the November midterm elections.

* Puerto Rico: Approximately $900 million in tax and revenue anticipation notes is expected to be sold in order to raise revenues on the cash-strapped commonwealth.

Video Source – AFP via YouTube
 
Online Sources – The Guardian; The Latin Americanist; Fox News Latino; The Huffington Post; Reuters

The Elusive Latino Swing Voter - Found!

Last week I pondered the impact (or lack thereof) that Latino voters might have in 2010.

There's always a million ways to read an election, but it is very interesting to see that the majority of polls showed Harry Reid trailing Sharron Angle by several points going into election day, but in the end he pulled out a strong win.

Political Scientist and pollster Matthew Baretto believes the Latino vote - and the failure of pollsters to poll in Spanish - explains the miss.

Nate Silver followed up quickly with the following analysis:

As a back-of-the-envelope test of Mr. Barreto’s theory, I compiled results from the eight states with the largest share of Latinos in their population: these are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Texas. There were 15 gubernatorial and Senate races last night between these states....In 10 of the 15 races, the polling average underestimated the Democrat’s margin by at least 2.5 points.

Now the questions turn to what politicians will actually do to meet the needs of this increasingly growing constituency.

Image Source: The Fourth Branch

Online Sources: NPR, NY Times/Fivethirtyeight, The Hill, Politico

The Elusive Latino Swing Voter

Election day: a day of reckoning for the entire house and a healthy chunk of senators, governors and local officials.

Before the pundits jump in to explain the extent of the 2010 Republican wave, it's been interesting to see the role of the Latino vote in this year's contests. Immigration hasn't been as big a national issue as in other years, but there's still been a lot of buzz about the immigration debate and the role of the Hispanic electorate.

Sharron Angle, the Tea Party-backed Republican candidate in Nevada has come under fire for an ad some claim is overtly racist, and a previously unheard of outside group called "Latinos for Reform" ran an ad urging Latinos not to vote in Nevada.

Angle's opponent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, has been criticized for stating that he would pursue immigration reform ahead of a bi-partisan energy bill. The maneuver cost the support of Republican Lindsay Graham and essentially killed the bill, even though virtually all observers knew the chances of immigration reform going through Congress this summer were virtually nil. Critics say Reid's move was a cynical ploy to win Latino votes in his home state, and if they're right it explains why Reid is fighting for his life against an opponent who should be very beatable.

Both Obamas even took to the Spanish-language airwaves this week to do some last minute campaigning on Univision radio. All the noise made Andrew Sullivan ask, somewhat awkwardly, "Por qué inmigración?," citing a piece by Ross Douthat of the New York Times that wondered aloud if Democrats really think they can win in 2012 on the immigration issue.

Douthtat writes: "in 2012 there’s little reason to think that the gains from mobilizing Hispanics around an (almost certainly futile) immigration reform push will count for all that much."

In fact, Nate Silver at Fivethirtyeight, the reigning champ of statistical political analysts, broke down the 2008 election and decided that "the removal of the Hispanic vote wouldn't have changed the election outcome in any state."

Until that cold political calculus changes, I think the best bet is for several more years of empty promises.

Image Source: Vivirlatino

Online Sources: Huffington Post, New York Times, Andrew Sullivan/The Atlantic, Fivethirtyeight.com, The New Yorker, NPR, RealClearPolitics, Associated Press

Cuban-American Reps. win in Florida

The Republican Party lost big on Election Day aside from the presidential race; the Democrats majority in the House of Representatives was strengthened and they are close to having a filibuster-proof Senate. Yet after suffering their “worst electoral drubbing in more than three decades” one of the few victories for the GOP occurred in Florida.

A trio of Cuban-American politicos- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, and Mario Diaz-Balart- faced difficult battles against Democratic opponents. At times the campaigns got heated with ugly accusations and for a while it seemed iffy that the three representatives would all be reelected.

The Latino electorate in Florida may’ve leaned towards the Democrats in the presidential race yet Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balart brothers (image) held on to their seats:

With nearly all of the votes counted in Miami-Dade, and all of the precincts reporting in Collier County, Mario Diaz-Balart emerged with a 52 to 48 percent victory…

Lincoln Diaz-Balart scored a remarkably large double-digit win over former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez to win his ninth term on Capitol Hill...

Ros-Lehtinen cruised to her 11th term with 58 percent of the vote to vanquish her challenger, Colombian-American businesswoman Annette Taddeo…

''It had all the makings of me going down,'' Ros-Lehtinen said. ``If I can make it in this election, I can make it in any election.''

Image- Time
Sources- The Latin Americanist, MarketWatch, Los Angeles Times, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, miamiherald.com

Latino vote vital in Obama win

Barack Obama’s triumph in yesterday’s presidential election crossed racial, religious, and gender lines. The much sought-after Latino vote was critical to the Illinois senator’s win.

Exit polls indicated a clear majority opting for him by a near 2-to-1 margin with an “overwhelming” number of young Latinos supporting him according to one source. The myth that Latinos would shy away from an African-American candidate was not to be especially in battleground states like New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado.

The impact of the Latino vote was best felt in Florida- one of the key battleground states won by the Democratic candidate. “A huge influx of Central and South Americans in South Florida and a large Puerto Rican population in the Orlando area” along with a shifting Cuban-American electorate are cited as the reasons why 57% of Floridian Latino voters chose Obama.

Why did the Latino community opt for Obama rather than Republican candidate John McCain? Columnist Andes Oppenheimer explains:

My opinion: Hispanics voted Democratic primarily because they are among the hardest hit by the economy and by the Iraq War.

But, as we have reported repeatedly in this column over the past two years, Latinos have good grounds for resenting the Republican Party's growing anti-immigrant stance. Many Republicans in Congress -- not McCain -- in some cases have bordered on racism.

McCain has a history of goodwill toward Hispanics and had sponsored a comprehensive immigration bill that advocated both securing the border and giving an earned path to legalization to undocumented immigrants.

But as the election neared, he shifted toward a let's-first-secure-the-border rhetoric to woo his party's hard-line anti-immigration vote, and the Republican Party's campaign platform pretty much advocated the unconditional deportation of millions of undocumented workers.

Image- Jackson County Floridian (“A campaign worker for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., center, registers new citizens to vote after a naturalization ceremony in Miami Sept. 16, 2008.”)
Sources- miamiherald.com, csmonitor.com, Guardian UK, Reuters, cbs4.com, Dallas Morning News, CNN

LatAm newspapers highlight Obama’s victory

Last night’s historical presidential election win by Barack Obama has become the top headline in newspapers worldwide. Latin America was certainly not an exception to this according to the following headlines in today’s online editions:

• Diario Granma (Cuba) – Obama to the White House
• El Heraldo (Honduras)- Barack Obama represents generational shift
• El Mercurio (Chile) - Obama becomes first president of color in U.S.
• El Mundo (El Salvador) – An “improbable” voyage into U.S. history
• El Tiempo (Colombia)- “Change has come to the United States” declares Obama in first speech as president-elect
• Folha da Sao Paulo (Brazil) – Obama becomes first black U.S. president in voting that changed electoral map
• Milenio (Mexico)- And Obama steamrolled
  

Image: Clarin (Headlines in several international dailies on Obama’s presidential win)
Sources- See above

Barack Obama becomes President–elect

According to numerous major media outlets (CNN, MSNBC, BBC News) Barack Obama will become the next president of the U.S.

He thus becomes the first African-American president in U.S. history and the first sitting senator since 1960 to win the highest office in the U.S.

As of this post, Obama won at least 333 electoral votes with seven states to be decided.

More on this development tomorrow.

Image - Canadian Press