The Big Stories to watch this week in LATAM
Rubio leads the charge to defend Uribe following his criminal conviction in Colombia. Ecuador experiences another massacre. CECOT prisoners speak out.
LATAM Daily Wires brings you the stories to watch this week in Latin America and the big headline developments over the weekend (and in this case, Monday). If you haven’t subscribed yet, you should.
Uribe convicted: Team Miami Republicans (and MCM) sad
Brazil fight 2.0? Probably not. Trump doesn’t know who Uribe is
Following the conviction of former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe for bribing witnesses and filing fraudulent petitions before the Constitutional Court, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio quickly waded into the public conversation to denounce the US’s oldest and largest ally in Latin America.
“The weaponization of Colombia’s judicial branch by radical judges has now set a worrisome precedent,” he tweeted shortly following the decision.
Rubio was joined in his “lawfare” arguments by Florida Senator Rick Scott, who said, “The political persecution and brutal attacks under Petro’s socialist regime are unacceptable. They won’t silence the fight for freedom.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what ‘freedom’ Uribe was fighting for in Scott’s argument, other than the freedom to bribe and intimidate former paramilitary allies into providing false testimony to Colombia’s highest court.
The Kirchner-esque public relations campaign was amplified by a cadre of Republican representatives and local politicians in Miami.
Venezuelan opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, parroting Rubio, also expressed her solidarity with the criminally convicted ex-Colombian President.
The episode is worth watching as Uribe returns to court Friday for sentencing. Will Rubio insist on creating another diplomatic crisis with a US ally, as he has done in Brazil?
Trump’s public catfight with his Brazilian counterpart Lula over the Bolsonaro trial seems to have backfired badly.
At PWS, we doubt it. Trump has often sidelined Rubio on foreign policy decisions. MAGA is, after all, a one-man show. Bolsonaro was a vocal supporter of Trump for years. And while Uribe was part of a coalition that promoted Trump in Miami during his first Presidential campaign, Uribe rarely speaks of or to, the U.S. President.
This is likely just political histrionics for Rubio’s Miami base. But we could be wrong! We certainly have made bad predictions before!
A Massacre in Ecuador: 17 killed
Gunmen in Ecuador killed at least 17 people in an attack on a bar, in the small town of El Empalme, located about 160 kilometres [100 miles] north of the city of Guayaquil in the coastal province of Guayas.
It is the latest high-profile incident in a years-long spiral into insecurity for the country that could once boast of being “the safest in Latin America.”
Right-wing Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa has been pleading for U.S. troop deployments in the region as his “firm hand” security policies fail to make a dent in the growing power of organized crime in the country.
“Los lobos,” an Ecuadorian gang that security officials believe is responsible for the murder of a presidential candidate last year, has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Last year, Noboa asked the US State Department to classify the group as a “terror organization.”
Rubio, however, seems too busy mounting a public relations campaign for a convicted criminal credibly accused of links to narco and paramilitary groups in Colombia.
CECOT prisoners finally speak out
The more than 200 men sent by the US to the Salvadoran concentration camp CECOT have been speaking to the media since they were returned home as part of a prisoner swap (which included a US citizen convicted of multiple murders in Spain.)
The men have been providing details about the inhuman conditions they endured: cruelty, violence, and classic dictatorial theatre.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has previously denied similar accusations from human rights organizations in his country, but has been silent before accusations of torture, arbitrary arrests, sexual abuse, and rotten food.
Andy Perozo, one of the Venezuelan men held at CECOT, told the BBC that prison authorities would only feed and clothe the inmates well immediately before visits by the Red Cross, to “take photos” that would let the prison appear in a good light
You can also donate a one-time gift via “Buy Me a Coffee”. It only takes a few moments, and you can do so here.
And if you can’t do any of that, please do help us by sharing the piece! We don’t have billionaire PR teams either. haha
Hasta pronto, piratas!