Venezuelan security forces tear gas opposition, detain lawmakers (March 10, 2020)

Venezuelan security forces quashed an opposition protest with tear gas yesterday, soon after it started. Thousands of protesters, many elderly, gathered Caracas' Chacao neighborhood, an opposition stronghold. It was the first demonstration called by opposition leader Juan Guaidó since he returned from a world tour aimed at shoring up international support for his push against the Nicolás Maduro led government in Venezuela. (Efecto Cocuyo)

Maduro supporters held a counter-rally in Caracas yesterday and the government suddenly announced military exercises in the capital and surrounded the National Assembly with tanks.

Though the demonstration was bigger than recent ones, it was far smaller than the massive marches, according to the Associated Press and the New York Times. Turnout is a relevant indicator for the opposition, which must determine its strategy moving forward, and Guaidó's leadership claim is shaky if he doesn't claim a breakthrough soon.

Yesterday Guaidó led a session of the National Assembly, after the demonstration, and announced a new march for tomorrow, to be led by students. (Efecto Cocuyo) But other opposition leaders have started to question Guaidó's approach. Henry Ramos, a lawmaker who heads the Democratic Action party, said that with a new presidential vote out of reach for now, it is time to start preparing for congressional elections that are scheduled for this year, reports the Associated Press.

Venezuelan security forces raided a hotel where opposition lawmakers are staying, and detained three of them, yesterday. The detained are Renzo Prieto, Ángel Torres y Zandra Castillo. Prieto was released from a four year detention in 2018. (Efecto Cocuyo)

More Venezuela

• This year's legislative ballots might well have to be manual, after a massive fire wiped out a significant chunk of the electronic voting infrastructure this weekend, including 49,408 electronic voting machines. (See Sunday's briefs.) But how the episode is managed could also have significant impact on the election's credibility, warns Efecto Cocuyo.

• Yesterday Maduro said the fire was a "terrorist attack" aimed at sabotaging the election. (Efecto Cocuyo)

• Maduro also ratified that a new National Electoral Commission (CNE) will be named in consensus with the main opposition parties. (Efecto Cocuyo)

• The Electoral Postulation Committee -- which will select the new National Electoral Commission (CNE) -- met on Monday, behind closed doors. (Efecto Cocuyo)

• Progress towards a respected parliamentary election this year, with a legitimate presidential election next year or the following, would be the first step towards a negotiated solution to Venezuela's quagmire, according to a new Crisis Group report. Despite the evident difficulties, "Crisis Group believes that a viable, mutually acceptable settlement may still be possible." Sanctions relief will be a key issue, the report discusses this and other variables, such as Maduro's fate within a new presidential election scenario.

• Armed groups and organized criminal structures, including drug trafficking groups, have thrived in Venezuela's environment of deteriorated state institutions. Nonetheless, Venezuela is not a primary transit country for U.S.-bound cocaine, according a new WOLA report by Geoff Ramsey and David Smilde based on U.S. government data. They emphasize that "a peaceful, negotiated, and orderly transition offers the best chance of allowing the reforms needed to address organized crime, drug trafficking, and corruption in Venezuela." They also propose that U.S. officials "devise and communicate a more flexible sanctions regime that incentivizes a negotiated electoral solution in Venezuela..."

News Briefs

Guyana

• Guyana's Supreme Court is set to rule on challenges to last week's election results later today. (Kaieteur News)

• The Guyana Press Association (GPA) has denounced increasing media harassment and the dampening of press freedom in the context of electoral crisis: "media operatives are increasingly becoming the targets of attacks related to the ongoing post-elections situation." (Caribbean Media Corporation)

• More than 80 global organizations -- including Global Witness and Amazon Watch -- have released a joint statement calling on ExxonMobil and other oil companies, as well as financial institutions contributing to the development of Guyana’s petroleum sector, to publicly and unequivocally declare that they will only conduct business with a lawfully installed government. (Kaieteur News)

• Four Caricom prime ministers travelled to Guyana in the context of the electoral crisis. (Kaieteur News)

• United Kingdom Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab offered Guyana assistance to credibly tally the Region 4 votes that are the focal point of controversy. (Demerara Waves, Kaieteur News)

Haiti

• Haiti will allow its 15,000-member national police force to organize and form a union. The move was done by presidential decree, in the wake of violent protests in Port-au-Prince yesterday. Masked protesters, some of whom were armed and dressed in police uniforms, attacked and ransacked several Haitian government ministries, reports the Miami Herald.

• There has been a a “spectacular rise” in kidnappings for ransom in Haiti, according to the national police, along with other violent crimes including carjackings and robberies, carried out mostly by armed criminal gangs, reports the Miami Herald.

Colombia

• Land used to cultivate coca illegally in Colombia is still at a record high, according to White House data announced last week. A two percent increase, despite a manual eradication plan, likely means that replanting rates are high, according to WOLA expert Adam Isacson. The findings come as Colombia is facing increasing pressure from the Trump administration to dramatically reduce coca production, reports the Associated Press. (See March 3's briefs.)

• WOLA's Colombia Peace page with numerical data has been updated and is a great source for information on peace deal implementation and the killings of social leaders.

Nicaragua

• More than 100,000 people have fled persecution in Nicaragua, with numbers set to rise, in the two years since a government crackdown on protesters plunged the country into a prolonged political crisis with economic fallout, according to the United Nations' refugee agency. Nicaraguan students, human rights defenders, journalists and farmers have sought asylum abroad at the rate of 4,000 a month, even after violence subsided, reports the Guardian.

• New U.S. sanctions against Nicaragua's National Police will provide a challenge to conducting regular business in Nicaragua, likely part of the point, argues the Latin America Risk Report. "By creating the legal gray zone, more tourists and foreign companies will avoid Nicaragua. These sanctions will raise compliance costs for businesses that decide to stay in the market." But while the sanctions will further economically and diplomatically isolate the country, it is not clear that they will pressure the Ortega regime, warns James Bosworth.

Central America

• Indigenous tribes in Central America, increasingly impatient with government inaction, are moving to claim ancestral lands on their own, and are often countered violently by settlers, who remain mostly unpunished, reports the New York Times. Conflicts over land and natural resources in the region have led to about 200 confrontations and the deaths of 60 Indigenous people.

Brazil

• Large ecosystems, like the Amazon rainforest, can crumble quickly once a tipping point has been reached, and, in fact, collapse more quickly afterwards than smaller biomes, according to a new study in Nature Communications. This means that policy makers have less time than they believe to tackle climate change, reports the Guardian.

• Brazil’s federal environment agency last year gave out the fewest fines for breaking conservation laws since 1995, reports Reuters.

Paraguay

• Mennonite settlers turned Paraguay into a beef exporting giant -- a success that is threatening their own way of life, the Chaco forest, and the very existence of the area's indigenous communities, reports the Conversation.

Guatemala

• Guatemala's Constitutional Court overturned a controversial law regulating NGO's in the country, that critics said would weaken civil society and violated people's rights. The government promised to respect the ruling, reports Reuters.

Mexico

• Massive mobilizations and a women's strike against gender violence have failed to move Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who said yesterday that his government's approach to femicides will remain the same. "We are going to reinforce the same strategy of looking at the causes of violence," he said in a press conference yesterday. (Guardian)

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