Daily Headlines: November 5, 2015

* Colombia: The Mexican Supreme Court’s ruling on marijuana wasn’t the only key judicial decision made in Latin America yesterday as Colombian magistrates legalized adoptions by same-sex couples.

* U.S.: President Barack Obama will reportedly unveil as soon as this week a new plan to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and transfer inmates to mainland maximum security facilities.

* Latin America: Panamanian authorities claimed to have found a drug trafficking connection between Colombia’s FARC rebels and fugitive Mexican drug capo Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

* Puerto Rico: Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla introduced a plan to restructure the $8 billion debt held by Puerto Rico’s main electricity company.

YouTube Source – teleSUR English
 
Online Sources – NBC News, Reuters, The Los Angeles Times, UPI, The Latin Americanist

Mexican Supreme Court Opens Door to Possible Marijuana Legalization

Mexico’s Supreme Court by a 4-1 margin ruled in a case on Wednesday that could open the door to legalizing the recreational use of marijuana.

A majority of magistrates of the high court’s criminal chamber declared unconstitutional portions of the national health law that have allowed he government to prohibit personal use of marijuana. The decision thus allows for the “ludic” use, growth and consuming of marijuana exclusively for personal usage.

“The Supreme Court calls on all institutions related to public policy on drugs to revise the current prohibitionist model,” said judge José Ramón Cossío. Doing so would help refocus the problems with drugs as a public health issue, he added.

“The absolute prohibition (of marijuana) is excessive and does not protect the right to health,” noted justice Olga Sánchez Cordero. “Recreational use of marijuana should be authorized in order to respect personal liberties,” she also mentioned.

The decision only applies to the four individual plaintiffs belonging to a cannabis club and who brought up the lawsuit, and the ruling does not have the power to overturn laws currently on the books regarding drugs.

Prior to the ruling, Mexican national security chief Manuel Mondragón expressed his rejection against any proposal to legalize marijuana. “I don’t want to live in a society addicted to marijuana,” said Mondragón, who also claimed that over half of consumers in Mexico are minors.

Despite Mondragón’s criticism, the high court’s ruling could be an antecedent to Congressional action towards decriminalizing marijuana usage. Legislative leaders representing the ruling PRI, conservative PAN and leftist PRD said they would be willing to debate the marijuana issue though refrained from providing any strong opinions. President Enrique Peña Nieto, meanwhile, called on federal health officials to publicly explain the impact of the high court verdict.

Daily Headlines: November 4, 2015

* Mexico: According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, about 150 journalists were murdered in Latin America since 2010 while roughly one in three cases occurring in Mexico.

* Brazil: Brent crude futures jumped by 3.6% to $50.70 on Tuesday partly due to worries over decreased oil production from Brazilian state-run film Petrobras.

* Argentina: Credit agency Moody’s improved Argentina’s credit rating in an apparent sign that the national economy will improve regardless of who wins the presidential runoff later this month.

* Ecuador: Ecuador’s government received another legal victory over the oil industry after arbitrators reduced from $1.77 billion to $1 billion a compensation owed to Occidental Petroleum.

YouTube Source – AJ+ (“Mexican photojournalist Rubén Espinosa was found dead in his Mexico City apartment (last July), along with 4 women”).

Online Sources – Benzinga, Reuters, teleSUR English, NBC News

Daily Headlines: November 3, 2015

* Dominican Republic: The Dominican government seemingly overreacted by stripping acclaimed author Junot Diaz of national honors over his criticism of the mistreatment of Haitian migrants.

* Venezuela: Venezuela will provide additional crude to nations of the Petrocaribe oil alliance according to remarks by President Nicolás Maduro.

* Latin America: The Day of the Dead may be closely associated with Mexico but nationals residing in Peru and Honduras also observed commemorations.

* Chile: Nine of the thirty-three Chilean miners trapped underground for sixty-nine days in 2010 have sued their lawyers over allegations of fraud.

YouTube Source – Big Think

Online Sources – The Guardian, Yahoo News, The Globe and Mail, teleSUR English

Daily Headlines: November 2, 2015

* Brazil: According to Brazilian daily O Estado de Sao Paulo, Volkswagen is negotiating settling a lawsuit claiming that the automaker turned a blind eye to the detention and torture of factory workers during the military dictatorship from the 1960s to 1980s.

* U.S.: Salvador Perez became the second Venezuelan to win the World Series Most Valuable Player award after the Kansas City Royals clinched the crown in five games.

* Argentina: U.S. federal judge Thomas Griesa ordered the Argentine government to pay an additional $6.1 billion to credit holders before paying off holdouts owed for the country’s historic 2001 debt default.

* Mexico: The Mexican Navy on Sunday rescued four fishermen who went missing after leaving the Ecuadoran port of Esmeraldas on September 24th and drifted 1200 miles away.

YouTube Source – NewsBeat Social (“A lawsuit filed September 22nd accuses German Automaker Volkswagen of condoning the torture of employees by the then-military government of Brazil in 1972.”)
 
Online Sources – Deutsche Welle, ESPN, Latin American Herald Tribune, GlobalPost

The Weekender: Batty Bloodsuckers

“The Weekender” is our occasional feature where every weekend we hope to highlight a short film, movie or documentary pertaining to the Americas.  

To commemorate Halloween, we're running the following post originally published on October 31, 2014. The text mostly remains the same but the video below the page break is changed.

What happens when the Cuban musician nephew of Dracula finds a secret potion that allows vampires to be able to live under the sun's rays?  The answer to this can be seen in the 1985 animated movie ¡Vampiros en La Habana! (Vampires in Havana).  The film provides a satirical look at both capitalism and Communism when competing factions of vampires - a Chicago mob and a European cartel - seek to get their claws on the "Vampisol" concoction from Joseph Amadeus von Dracula.  Featuring trumpet playing by the legendary Arturo Sandoval, ¡Vampiros is not your usual scary Halloween flick but is instead a funny spoof of horror and gangster films.

An excerpt from ¡Vampiros can be seen below. (Note that the movie has some adult themes; hence, we're classifying it as Not Safe For Work).

Online Source - imdb.com

YouTube Source - delamilonga 

Daily Headlines: October 30, 2015

* Peru: President Ollanta Humala lifted a state of emergency order for regions in southern Peru affected last month by violent clashes between police and protesters opposed to a planned copper mine.

* Venezuela: The U.S. could push for more sanctions against Venezuelan officials despite President Nicolas Maduro’s threats of suing the Obama administration.

* Puerto Rico: Will Puerto Rico run out of money as early as this November and fall into default?

* Costa Rica: The Costa Rica government and children’s rights advocates are planning to expand an online marketing campaign aimed at discouraging child sex tourism.

YouTube Source – AFP (“Demonstrators gather in Lima (weeks ago) to protest against a big Chinese copper mining project in the provinces of Cotabambas and Grau.”)
 
Online Sources – Reuters, GlobalPost, La Prensa, Seeking Alpha, Tico Times

Daily Headlines: October 29, 2015

* Ecuador: In the latest twist to the legal telenovela that is the Ecaudoran environmental damages ordeal against Chevron, the oil giant’s main witness at a 2014 appeal recanted his entire testimony.

* Mexico: Mexican federal police committed extrajudicial killings in two incidents earlier this year that left some fifty people dead according to Human Rights Watch.

* Brazil: Community groups in Rio de Janeiro claimed that the government’s relocation program ahead of the 2016 Olympics is in reality segregating thousands of impoverished families.

* U.S.: The Kansas City Royals won the first two games of the World Series with help from Dominican starter Johnny Cueto who pitched a complete game gem on Wednesday night.

YouTube Source – teleSUR English (“The Canadian Supreme Court (last month) voted to a allow the lawsuit that seeks to recover US$9.5 billion from a 2011 compensation settlement arising from the pollution of land belonging to Amazonian indigenous villages by Chevron.”)
 
Online Sources – ESPN, The Guardian, Vice News, Al Jazeera America

Daily Headlines: October 28, 2015

* Cuba: Despite a diplomatic rapprochement towards Cuba, the U.S. once again opposed a U.N. General Assembly resolution overwhelmingly condemning the trade embargo against the island.

* Mexico: The Mexican Supreme Court may emit a ruling this week that could open the door to legalizing the recreational use of marijuana.

* U.S.: Kansas City Royals pitcher and World Series Game 1 starter Edinson Volquez left for the Dominican Republic hours after his father suddenly passed away at the age of 63.

* Colombia: President Juan Manuel Santos proposed a bilateral ceasefire with the FARC rebels to begin on New Year’s Day of 2016.

YouTube Source – euronews (191 U.N. member states condmned the U.S. embargo against cuba in a resolution that for the second straight year was only opposed to by the U.S. and Israel).
 
Online Sources – USA TODAY, GlobalPost, BBC News, CNN

Daily Headlines: October 27, 2015

* Brazil: The first-ever World Indigenous Games commenced in Brazil yet much like preparations for the 2016 Olympics in Rio, the competition has not been free from controversy.

* Mexico: Residents in Mexico’s Golden Triangle region claimed that they have been unfairly displaced as part of the manhunt to find fugitive drug capo Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

* Colombia: Preliminary peace talks between the Colombian government and ELN are in jeopardy after at least eleven security agents were killed and two were kidnapped in a guerrilla ambush.

* Venezuela: Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz tried to downplay allegations by ex-prosecutor Franklin Reyes who claimed that false evidence was used to convict opposition activist Leopoldo López.

YouTube Source – AFP

Online Sources – Scotsman, Global Voices Online, Voice of America, BBC News

Daily Headlines: October 26, 2015

* Latin America: Elections were held in four countries of the Americas yesterday including Guatemala where Jimmy Morales became president-elect while a runoff will be needed to see who will replace Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

* Brazil: A recent Human Rights Watch report blasted Brazilian prison authorities for allowing inmates to takeover severely overcrowded Pernambuco prisons.

* Mexico: Six people died in Mexico as a result of accidents related to Hurricane Patricia though damage was minimal and the death toll was lower than anticipated.

* Colombia: Forensics investigators last week positively identified the remains of three women who may have been tortured and killed by security forces during the 1985 Palace of Justice siege.

YouTube Source – euronews (Official results of Haiti’s presidential elections, which involved a whopping fifty-four candidates, are expected to be revealed around November 4th).

Online Sources – Human Rights Watch, Fox News Latino, Colombia Reports, Reuters, CNN

Daily Headlines: October 23, 2015 (Updated)

* Mexico: A state of emergency has been declared in three Mexican states in anticipation of the expected landfall today of the category five Hurricane Patricia.

Update (October 24th, 12:30 AM): The storm was downgraded to a category four hurricane hours after it reached Mexico's Pacific coast on Friday night. As of this update, some material damage was reported but no fatalities.  Civil defense chief Luis Felipe Puente nevertheless warned that Patricia could still cause flash floods, landslides and infrastructural damage to states like Colima and Jalisco. (Link in Spanish).


Update (October 24th, 5:15 PM): 

So far, there are no reports of major damage from #Patricia. Our gratitude to all for your thoughts, prayers and actions #PrayForMexico.

— Enrique Peña Nieto (@EPN) October 24, 2015

Nevertheless, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto traveled to Colima to oversee the aftermath of Patricia, which was downgraded to a tropical storm and is now drenching the northern border state of Nuevo Leon. (Link in Spanish).

* Paraguay: Former Paraguayan President Federico Franco could become the latest Latin American leader to be investigated for alleged corruption during his rule.

* Cuba: Will the U.S. reverse its historic vote in the U.N. General Assembly next week and opt to condemn the decades-long trade embargo against Cuba?

* Ecuador: Scientists have discovered a new species of giant tortoise on the Galapagos Islands and named them after the longtime caretaker of the late emblematic tortoise George.

YouTube Source – Reuters
 
Online Sources including Updates – BBC News, Xinhua, The Guardian, InSight Crime, Milenio.com, Twitter, El Economista

Daily Headlines: October 22, 2015

* Latin America: Polls indicate that frontrunner Daniel Scioli has a borderline chance to become Argentina’s next president-elect, while surveys suggest that Guatemalan political outsider Jimmy Morales will win in this Sunday’s runoff election.

* Venezuela: President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela said that the global price of oil must nearly double to $88 per barrel in order to guarantee international investments.

* Cuba: Cuban officials announced a project devised with the help of a U.S. environmental group to protect the nearly 100 species of shark living off the island’s shores.

* Mexico: Authorities arrested six people suspected of “planning, organizing and carrying out” the July prison escape of Sinaloa drug cartel head Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

YouTube Source – AFP (“Argentine President Cristina Kirchner will step down from power after a nearly eight year reign, leaving a deeply divided country behind.”)
 
Online Sources – Reuters, BBC News, Nature.com, ABC News

Daily Headlines: October 21, 2015

* Cuba: Cuban graffiti artist Danilo “El Sexto” Maldonado was freed from jail following a ten-month detention over an “attempted piece of protest performance art.”

* Uruguay: The repatriation of six former Guantanamo Bay prisoners to Uruguay has allegedly served as an obstacle to the White House’s push to close the military facility in eastern Cuba.

* Brazil: Attorneys have filed a new petition to bring up impeachment charges against President Dilma Rousseff over accusations of doctoring government data.

* Vatican: Vatican officials rejected unconfirmed Italian news reports claiming that Argentine-born Pope Francis was sick and diagnosed with a curable brain tumor.

YouTube Source – Oslo Freedom Forum (“Lia Villares accepts the Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent on behalf of imprisoned Cuban artist El Sexto at the 2015 Oslo Freedom Forum.”)

Online Sources – The Guardian, Bloomberg, Reuters, CBS News

Daily Headlines: October 20, 2015

* Canada: The incoming Liberal government under Justin Trudeau could affect Canadian mining interests in Latin America as well as the North American state’s growing Latino immigrant population.

* Mexico: Parents of some of 43 Ayotzinapa students missing for over a year have called on a boycott against a documentary that they claim relies on a “false” version of events.

* Cuba: Cuba’s Foreign Ministry rejected unconfirmed claims that troops from the island were sent to Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

* Venezuela: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro railed against Lorenzo Mendoza, the head of the Empresas Polar food conglomerate, for suggesting that the country needs an international economic bailout.

YouTube Source – Associated Press
 
Online Sources – Newsweek, Voice of America, Reuters, teleSUR English, Latin American Herald Tribune

Daily Headlines: October 19, 2015

* Colombia: In the latest pact between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels, both sides agreed to work together and provide information on the tens of thousands of people missing due to the armed conflict.

* Bolivia: Bolivian officials claimed that spy planes have crossed into national territory and, thus, the government will buy some $229 million in radar equipment from France.

* Argentina: For the first time Argentina made it through to the final four of the Rugby World Cup after Los Pumas blitzed Ireland by a score of 43-20 in the quarterfinals.

* Brazil: President Dilma Rousseff backed beleaguered Finance Minister Joaquim Levy despite mounting pressure against her proposed austerity measures designed to boost the weakened Brazilian economy.

YouTube Source – AFP (“Thirteen years after Medellin was rocked by violence when the government decided to recapture a sector of the city disputed by right-wing paramilitaries and militias, family members and others take part in commemoration events.”)
 
Online Sources – BBC Sport, Voice of America, Fox News Latino, Reuters