The Latin American Report # 691

Late yesterday, Sunday, news broke of a massacre unleashed by gunmen in the hyper-violent state of Guanajuato, Mexico, with the painful toll of 11 dead and a similar number wounded; some unconfirmed reports speak of 17 dead in total so far. The incident, which authorities seem to associate with a dispute between criminal gangs, occurred at a soccer stadium in the town of Salamanca where a match was taking place. The mayor of Salamanca has demanded that Claudia Sheinbaum's government get more decisively involved in confronting the violence problem plaguing the north-central Aztec region. "This incident adds to a wave of violence that we unfortunately suffer in the state and particularly in Salamanca," said the local official. On Saturday, five people were killed in different communities there.

Venezuela

The civil society organization Foro Penal, defending (and advocating for) many of the so-called political prisoners in Venezuela, states that, by its count, Delcy Rodríguez's government has released 260 of them in total, after confirming the mass release of 104 just yesterday, Sunday. This could imply a significant easing in the related bureaucracy, which many associate with Diosdado Cabello. The total figure of releases would still be far below the hundreds of individuals supposedly recognized as political prisoners who remain detained, and whose relatives continue to wait with a lot of faith outside various prisons. "There is a light, there is a hope, someone from the Gedeón case got out, that filled us with joy. We celebrated that as if my son were getting out," one hopeful mother told EFE. On Friday, Rodríguez spoke of nearly 630 total releases, without a single piece of evidence to back up the claim.

Regional news brief

• Foggy Bottom has sanctioned the two members of Haiti's Transitional Presidential Council most connected to the controversial process of ousting Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, as the country is very close to entering, again, a mode of institutional political headlessness. Washington had warned it would take punitive measures in case of removal.
  

• A merchant and his psychology student son died in the tumultuous northern department of Cesar, victims of an explosive attack attributed to the National Liberation Army (ELN in Spanish), the longest-running guerrilla organization in the entire Western Hemisphere. The incident occurred on a highway within the locality of Pailitas. According to an EFE wire report, the deceased were not the intended targets of the attack—which used a cylinder loaded with explosives—, but that it was originally directed against security agents.
  

Cuba: all possible help 👇

This is all for today’s report.