The Latin American Report # 343
Claudia Sheinbaum will present a security plan today that could mark a departure from the policies of her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador. México's first female president will be proposing to lower homicide figures in certain enclaves where levels of violence attributed to organized crime are irrational, such as the bloody cities of Colima, Tijuana, Acapulco, and Celaya. In Guerrero, a dismal state where ten years ago the trail of 43 young student teachers was shamefully lost, the mayor of Chilpancingo, its capital, was brutally murdered on Sunday. His head was left exposed on the top of a van. The dead mayor feared for his life according to requests he made shortly before he died for his security to be reinforced. His government secretary was murdered a few days earlier.
Sheinbaum will also allocate resources to protect the population of Chiapas, in some cases relocated in Guatemala and other places, displaced by fierce clashes between criminal groups. The now-retired AMLO's security strategy was to prioritize social programs as a way to prevent young people and other vulnerable from being forced to get involved with gangs, adding to the idea that directly confronting the latter would end up generating more chaos and violence. “Hugs, not bullets,” was the phrase that summed up the veteran leader's security policy. While I understand this as a weakness and a sign that the Mexican State is failing in certain points of the Aztec geography, history has shown that, in the end, what López Obrador said is true. The most recent case that demonstrates this is the inability of the security forces to stop a wave of violence with over a hundred deaths in the state of Sinaloa, based on the shady capture in the United States of a historic druglord who never set foot in a Mexican jail.
Not again, please
VIDEO: Mexico police urge evacuation of beach areas before Hurricane Milton landfall.
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) October 8, 2024
Police drive around the port of Progreso, on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, urging people to evacuate the beach area before Hurricane Milton makes landfall as a potentially catastrophic Category… pic.twitter.com/OG2vDDGCMf
The Latam connection with the Middle East crisis
The government of Lula da Silva extracted yesterday, Monday, a second group of Brazilian nationals from Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, in an emergency move seeking to make them safe from the deadly Israeli onslaught against Hezbollah. Tel Aviv seeks to erase any threat to its security from groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, supported by Tehran. The flight, with a stopover in Lisboa and coordinated by the Brazilian Air Force, carried about 230 citizens of the South American giant, including about 50 minors. The first flight arrived in Sao Paulo last Sunday, and the returnees were received by the president himself.
Lebanon is home to the largest community of Brazilians living in the Middle East, an area experiencing a humongous crisis as the ultra-conservative government of Benjamin Netanyahu continues to punish Gaza for the deadly attack perpetrated by the armed wing of Hamas last October. Lebanon-based Hezbollah has been exchanging fire with Israel ever since in declared solidarity with the battered enclave, which has seen 42,000 people killed, two-thirds of them innocent civilians according to Israeli estimates. Ten Peruvians were evacuated yesterday from Lebanon as well with the support of the Chilean air force.
SourceDuring the last few days, there have been multiple demonstrations in the region related to the Middle East drama, which could be hours away from boiling over if Israel and Iran exchange direct retaliations. Most of them were in protest against Israel's disproportionate response to the Hamas attack. Colombian students demonstrated yesterday shouting 'It's not a war, it's a genocide'. Similar protests were reported in Argentina, where the government of Javier Milei has resolutely supported Israel, without any reservations about the unjust toll of innocent lives. The Paraguayan President Santiago Peña has also supported this position. In a new attack in the last few hours, a score of people died in central Gaza, including five children and two women.
Regional X
The never-ending nightmare
Displaced victims of Haiti's latest gang attack mourned the loss of family members as they awaited food handouts after being driven from their homes with few belongings pic.twitter.com/XCYlOJZXT4
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 7, 2024
Please let it rain
Bolivia is experiencing its worst-ever fire season, and the hardest-hit area has been the wealthy farming region of Santa Cruz, where around 17 million acres have been reduced to cinders https://t.co/9giIw1T49v pic.twitter.com/cq0j69azKo
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 8, 2024
And this is all for our report today. I have referenced the sources dynamically in the text, and remember you can learn how and where to follow the LATAM trail news by reading my work here. Have a nice day.
I always read your posts carefully, but because I am poorly informed otherwise of the countries and peoples I usually refrain from comment. However, I wanted to address something in this post.
I learned that the term conservative referred to human rights, at least in the USA. I am ultra-conservative, because I understand that human rights underlie every political and civil undertaking. Respect for human rights all people have is what makes civil society possible. When I grew up conservatives opposed government oppression, taxation, censorship, and similar degradation of the human rights of their civilian populations. Conversely Liberals raised taxes, censor forthright discussions regarding government policies, and have begun arresting and holding people in captivity for having opinions counter to state propaganda in a turn to worse oppression across the West, perhaps most notably in England of late, where it is the new Prime Minister Keir Starmer, of the Liberal Party, that is behind this worsening oppression. [Edit: turns out he is in the Labour Party. My bad.]
I do not know how conservative could mean oppressive, as you seem to have used the term here, referring to Israel. I don't think any polity in the world more disrespects human rights than Israel, where recently a group protested riotously, even breaking into a jail, demanding the right to rape male Palestinian children they considered political enemies of the state of Israel.
I vehemently oppose such violence and abuse, and I consider that opposition to be based on the rights of people accused of crimes to humane and just treatment, even in the hands of their political enemies, to be a conservative policy: conserving human rights. I would describe the demands of the Israelis demanding the Palestinian children held captive by the state of Israel be handed over to them to be raped as liberal, referring to liberating the power of the state from restraint, disdaining, not guarding or conserving human rights.
These terms seem prone to being disparaged by politically oriented groups opposing them, misinterpreted, and used to mock or discourage their political opponents. They are quite confusing to begin with, as Liberals and Libertarians are practically opposite in policy despite having the same root word as the name of their movement.
What do you mean by 'conservative'? What is it conservatives are conserving so hard in Israel you refer to that polity as ultra-conservative?
Thanks!
I was referring not the whole core of conservatism but to specific approaches related with it, specifically exceptionalism and the use of strength abroad. I understand your point here and (maybe) it was an inappropriate use of the term without giving some context to the way I interpret it. Although not seeing you eye to eye in all aspects of your concept of being a conservative but I can be in your same political group when literally we abide by that concept. Thanks for making this content better with your exhaustive analysis of it, and for this question in particular.
I appreciate your considered response. I completely agree Israel definitely features exceptionalism and the use of military force externally.
I neither expect complete agreement nor disparage our lack of total alignment regarding policies. I have been forthcoming of some of my political views, and you also, if more discreetly, communicate your own in your posts. The great disparity of our cultural milieus and age gives little reason to expect anything other than similar disparity in our views, and I anticipated this when I followed you.
TBQH, it was one of the primary reasons I followed you. I am absolutely confident I am mistaken to some degree in everything I think I know. If I only communicate with people that agree with me I will never learn information contrary to that I know. I do not want to be wrong, therefore I seek criticism of my views so that I can correct those I discover to be incorrect. You are far too tolerant and professionally disciplined to offer much criticism, however you are prodigious of research on American countries I find little information about in my country, and while I came for a schooling I stay for the education of a different sort.
I have been quite surprised by such synchrony, such as you suggest here, between our political views, given the great disparity in our experiences, and can only assume you are extremely principled, extraordinarily intelligent, and wise, because you are right so often. At least, when you agree with me =)
I will consider what I think of conservatism, exceptionalism, and readiness to afflict other polities with military assaults as per your reply.
Thanks!