The Latin American Report # 617

Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of the currently convicted former president Jair Bolsonaro, suggested to the US Secretary of War that American military forces also incursion into the South American giant by bombing boats allegedly transporting drugs through the Guanabara Bay. "I heard there are boats like this here in Rio de Janeiro, in Guanabara Bay, flooding Brazil with drugs. Wouldn't you like to spend a few months here helping us fight these terrorist organizations?," he expressed via X.

Obviously, this is a position that is the complete opposite of that adopted by those countries targeted by the deadly US attacks, like Venezuela and Colombia, and it also clashes all along the line with the sovereignist position of Lula da Silva. So far, U.S. military forces have carried out nine attacks against alleged drug-running boats, with a toll of 37 dead. The last of these attacks took place this past Wednesday, with three victims.

The Colombian president Gustavo Petro again denounced Trump's harsh rhetoric this Thursday, and downplayed the place of the people killed in the drug trade business, stressing that in any case they are "workers of the drug trade," because the principal actors behind the phenomenon "do not live on the bombed boats nor in the coca fields that exist in Colombia" but rather "in the great cities of luxury in the world". "Whether the boatmen are guilty of carrying cocaine or not, in both circumstances there is a disproportionate use of force, punished by international humanitarian law," he said.

Lula for president

Stopping in Brazil, the current head of the Palácio do Planalto announced that he will seek a fourth non-consecutive presidential term, expressing that despite being around 80 years old he feels fit enough to withstand the pressure of the office for one more term. "I’m turning 80, but you can be sure I have the same energy I had when I was 30. And I’m going to run for a fourth term in Brazil," he said from Indonesia. The late Pepe Mujica would say that many leaders like Lula find it difficult to pass the torch to the new generations even within their own political organizations, not to mention those cases in the region where the husband's term is followed by the wife's.

This coming Monday, a meeting between Lula and Trump could take place in Malaysia, where the veteran union leader will arrive to participate in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit. To a large extent, there has been a certain peace in recent weeks between both administrations following the imposition of heavy 50% tariffs on a representative portion of Brazilian products, which Washington alleged was a punishment for the trial against Jair Bolsonaro for coup-plotting. With the latter currently out of the electoral discussion, many analyses point to Lula being able to dominate the next year's electoral process with relative ease, unless the conservative leader manages to transfer his electoral capital.

Climate

Let's hope the damages are minimal in a complicated and vulnerable situation for the region, especially thinking about the case of Cuba 👇.

This is all for today’s report.