Sanctions relief as tool for Venezuela -- WOLA (June 7, 2019)

News Briefs

Venezuela

• There is increasing evidence that U.S. sanctions relief is a useful tool for sowing dissent among key allies of Venezuela's Maduro administration, according to a new WOLA analysis. U.S. officials are emphasizing potential relief for government officials who turn on the regime, a shift WOLA notes helps create "off ramps" for officials looking to support a transition. "Though offering sanctions relief to individuals emerges as a dominant tool of the U.S. government strategy in Venezuela, it remains to be seen how effective such offers can be at lowering exit costs for individuals. ... A transition of any sort will have to rely on strategies of reducing exit costs for Venezuelan elites. But doing so will require credible offers in an environment in which a transition is increasingly being framed as a zero-sum game for these figures."

• U.S. special envoy for Venezuela Elliott Abrams said Russian support for Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela remains firm, contradicting a tweet earlier this week by U.S. President Donald Trump who said Russia removed most of it's Venezuela staff, reports the Guardian. The Kremlin had also denied Trump's claims. (See Tuesday's briefs.) Indeed, Russia will increase its contingent of military specialists in Venezuela if Maduro requests it, said a foreign ministry official. (EFE)

• The Venezuelan exodus is accelerating at a "staggering" rate, the United Nations said today. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said there are now more than 4 million Venezuelans living abroad – and that 1 million have left in the last seven months alone. The "alarming" figure highlights the urgent need to support host countries, mainly in Latin America, said the UN refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in a joint statement. The new figures come a day after Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra announced his country would implement stricter measures for Venezuelan migrants. (Miami Herald, Al Jazeera)

• Recent shipwrecks of migrants leaving Venezuela shed light on a criminal sex-trafficking ring that appears to involve high-level law enforcement officials, reports InSight Crime.

Migration

• Rampant gender violence and impunity for perpetrators in Honduras is a key driver of unauthorized migration, writes Jill Filipovic in a wrenching Politico piece.

Mexico

• Mexico-U.S. discussions on how to stem migration -- and avoid U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to apply a blanket tariff on all Mexican goods on Monday -- continue today. Mexico reportedly offered to send 6,000 members of its controversial newly formed national guard to its southern border in talks yesterday. (Guardian) A tentative deal under discussion involves a sweeping overhaul of asylum rules across the region, and would require Central American migrants to seek refuge in the first country they enter after leaving their homeland, reports the Washington Post.

• In the meantime, Mexican authorities are already cracking down on migrants crossing the country's southern border, as well as advocates associated with caravans who are now accused of human trafficking. (Guardian, AFP, see yesterday's briefs.)

• Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador should not accede to U.S. migration demands, even in response to to the tariff threat, argues Jorge Castañeda in a New York Times op-ed. (See yesterday's briefs.)

• But economic necessity leaves Mexico with little choice but to placate Trump, according to the Economist. "There is nothing we have in our arsenal that is equivalent to what the United States can do to us,” says former Mexican diplomat Andrés Rozental.

• Fighting between warring criminal factions in Morelos state is a source of increasing concern for Mexican authorities, who deployed units of the new National Guard to the southern state, and the seven other states accounting for half of the country’s homicides: Guanajuato, Mexico State, Jalisco, Mexico City, Guerrero, Veracruz and Michoacán. (InSight Crime)

Guatemala

• Guatemala holds general elections on June 16 -- and will almost certainly have a runoff in August to select a president. After the country's top court eliminated two of the top candidates from the running, the election is marked by a crowded field of mostly unknown presidential hopefuls, writes Lucas Perelló in Global Americans.

Brazil

• Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s efforts to roll-back environmental regulations reverse years of innovative policymaking in the country, writes Natalie Unterstell in Americas Quarterly.

• A sex assault claim against Brazilian football start Neymar has sparked a "he raped me, she wanted sex" debate, that runs along the usual lines these scandals follow, reports the Washington Post. (See yesterday's briefs.)

El Salvador

• Former Salvadoran president Salvador Sánchez Cerén left office last weekend -- with little to show for his tenure, writes InSight Crime: "slight improvements in the country’s prisons were more than offset by rising homicides and the reappearance of police death squads."

• His successor, President Nayib Bukele, is the first president since the El Salvador's civil war who doesn't belong to either of the country's main political parties -- which evolved from the two warring factions. And his first order in office, to change the name of a military base honoring a commander accused of leading the horrific 1981 El Mozote massacre, "signals an attempt to break with those parties’ legacies," according to the Economist. (See Monday's post.)

Colombia

• A New York Times report on controversial orders for the Colombian army to boost kill rates has unleashed a scandal within the country's journalism ranks, with angry debate over why Colombian media did not cover the story first. (Nacla)

Chile

• Economists love Chile's pension system -- but many Chileans are angered by its regressive tendencies and want more redistribution. (Economist)

Argentina

• Martín Caparrós dissects the Argentine presidential campaign in a New York Times Español op-ed. Current President Mauricio Macri is trying to convince voters that the economic crisis they are living through is not of his making, but rather his predecessor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is running for VP on an opposing ticket. Though that may be, notes Caparrós, most voters will probably also remember that they were slightly better off under the last administration, no matter how unsustainable it may have been.

Creative Friday

• Mexico's Aguascalientes city is fertile ground for artists -- a graphic column by Ernesto Sin in the Guardian.

Did I miss something, get something wrong, or do you have a different take? Let me know ...

Latin America Daily Briefing