Latin-America
Venezuelan voters face crucial choice: Reelect Maduro or give opposition a chance after 25 years
The future of Venezuela is on the line. Voters will decide Sunday whether to reelect President Nicolas Maduro, whose 11 years in office have been beset by crisis, or allow the opposition a chance to deliver on a promise to undo the ruling party's policies that caused economic collapse and forced millions to emigrate.
Historically fractured opposition parties have coalesced behind a single candidate, giving the United Socialist Party of Venezuela its most serious electoral challenge in a presidential election in decades.
Maduro is being challenged by former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia, who represents the resurgent opposition, and eight other candidates. Supporters of Maduro and Gonzalez marked the end of the official campaign season Thursday with massive demonstrations in the capital, Caracas.
Maduro and his allies have traditionally fended off challenges by barring rivals from elections and painting them as out-of-touch elitists in league with foreign powers. But this time, the ruling party is allowing the Unitary Platform, the coalition of the main opposition parties, to participate in the election.
A deal that allowed the opposition coalition to participate in the election won Maduro some relief from crippling economic sanctions imposed by the United States. But that respite was short-lived. President Joe Biden's administration reimposed the sanctions, citing mounting government repression of real and perceived adversaries, including blocking the candidacy of opposition powerhouse María Corina Machado.
Here’s what to know about Venezuela’s upcoming presidential election.
Who is the opposition candidate?The most talked-about name in the race is not on the ballot: María Corina Machado. The former lawmaker emerged as an opposition star in 2023, filling the void left when a previous generation of opposition leaders fled into exile. Her principled attacks on government corruption and mismanagement rallied millions of Venezuelans to vote for her in the opposition’s October primary.
But Maduro’s government declared the primary illegal and opened criminal investigations against some of its organizers. Since then, it has issued warrants for several of Machado’s supporters and arrested some members of her staff, and the country’s top court affirmed a decision to keep her off the ballot.
Yet, she kept on campaigning, holding rallies nationwide and turning the ban on her candidacy into a symbol of the loss of rights and humiliations that many voters have felt for over a decade.
She has thrown her support behind Edmundo González Urrutia, a former ambassador who has never held public office, helping a fractious opposition unify.
They are campaigning together on the promise of economic reform that will lure back the millions of Venezuelans who have migrated since Maduro became president in 2013.
González began his diplomatic career as an aide to Venezuela’s ambassador in the U.S. in the late 1970s. He was posted to Belgium and El Salvador, and served as Caracas’ ambassador to Algeria. His last post was as ambassador to Argentina during Hugo Chávez’s presidency, which began in 1999.
More recently, González worked as an international relations consultant and wrote a historical work on Venezuela during World War II.
Why is the current president having trouble?Maduro’s popularity has dwindled due to an economic crisis caused by a drop in oil prices, corruption and government mismanagement.
Maduro can still bank on a cadre of die-hard believers, known as Chavistas, including millions of public employees and others whose businesses or employment depend on the state. But the ability of his party to use access to social programs to make people vote has diminished as the economy has frayed.
He is the heir to Hugo Chávez, a popular socialist who expanded Venezuela’s welfare state while locking horns with the United States.
Sick with cancer, Chávez handpicked Maduro to act as interim president upon his death. He took on the role in March 2013, and the following month, he narrowly won the presidential election triggered by his mentor’s death.
Maduro was reelected in 2018, in a contest that was widely considered a sham. His government banned Venezuela’s most popular opposition parties and politicians from participating and, lacking a level playing field, the opposition urged voters to boycott the election.
That authoritarian tilt was part of the rationale the U.S. used to impose economic sanctions that crippled the country’s crucial oil industry.
Who will vote?More than 21 million Venezuelans are registered to vote, but the exodus of over 7.7 million people due to the prolonged crisis — including about 4 million voters — is expected to reduce the number of potential voters to about 17 million.
Voting is not mandatory and is done on electronic machines.
Venezuelan law allows people to vote abroad, but only about 69,000 voters met the criteria to cast ballots at embassies or consulates during this election. Costly and time-consuming government prerequisites to register, lack of information and a mandatory proof of legal residency in a host country kept many migrants from registering to vote.
Venezuelans in the U.S. face an insurmountable obstacle: Consulates, where citizens abroad would typically cast their ballots, are closed because Caracas and Washington severed diplomatic relations after Maduro’s 2018 reelection.
Under what conditions is the election taking place?A more free and fair presidential election seemed like a possibility last year, when Maduro’s government agreed to work with the U.S.-backed Unitary Platform coalition to improve electoral conditions in October 2023. An accord on election conditions earned Maduro’s government broad relief from U.S. economic sanctions on its state-run oil, gas and mining sectors.
But days later, authorities said the opposition’s primary was against the law and began issuing warrants and arresting human rights defenders, journalists and opposition members.
A U.N.-backed panel investigating human rights violations in Venezuela has reported that the government has increased repression of critics and opponents ahead of the election, subjecting targets to detention, surveillance, threats, defamatory campaigns and arbitrary criminal proceedings.
The government has also used its control of media outlets, the country’s fuel supply, electric network and other infrastructure to limit the reach of the Machado-González campaign.
The mounting actions taken against the opposition prompted the Biden administration earlier this year to end the sanctions relief it granted in October.
Chileans confront a homelessness crisis, a first for one of South America's richest countries
The presidential residence of Gabriel Boric, the leftist millennial leader of Chile elected three years ago in the wake of public unrest over income inequality, shares a street in downtown Santiago with an overwhelmed homeless shelter.
The sight of cardboard boxes and blankets strewn across sidewalks in Boric's bohemian neighborhood serves as a sharp reminder of his struggle to fulfill his promise to give Chileans "a better life."
A pandemic-induced recession combined with a housing crunch and a major immigration influx have expanded Chile's homeless population like never before. Over the last four years, the rate of homelessness in one of South America's richest economies has jumped more than 30%, transforming the streets of a country that prides itself on its prosperity.
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"The resources allocated to combat homelessness have been reduced, and the homeless population has increased," said Rosario Carvajal, a city councilor in the capital, Santiago.
Even in the "barrios altos" — the well-heeled areas that presidents before Boric called home — destitute families have increasingly turned benches into beds and trees into toilets. In the beachside tourist hub of Viña del Mar, huddles of improvised tents have overshadowed the trendy art scene.
Chile said it has registered 21,126 homeless people this year, compared to 15,435 in 2020. Government figures rely on single-night snapshots by municipalities. Social workers put the real count around 40,000.
Last month, the government announced that, for the first time, it would include the homeless in its national census. Aid workers say that a better number, however flawed, will better reflect the scope of the problem and the country's progress — or lack thereof — toward fixing it.
"This should force the government to implement more effective social policies," said Andrés Millar, from Chilean charity Hogar de Cristo.
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The sheer visibility of so many homeless people in Chile — a country considered far wealthier and more stable than its neighbors — has pushed the problem up on the agenda. "There is a lot of pressure from the neighbors to recover the public spaces," said Carvajal.
Chilean police, reviled by the left for their harsh handling of the mass 2019 protests, have taken to tearing down encampments, joining municipal workers in routinely removing rough sleepers from parks and plazas.
"Police come and take everything, my tent, my blankets, my HIV medication," said 43-year-old Paris López who sleeps outside in downtown Santiago. She stays up all night, she said, fearing violence from police as much as assaults from criminal gangs that have recently gained a foothold in Chile.
"It's dangerous," Victoria Azevedo, a homeless mother of two, said of life on the streets in Santiago — particularly amid a crime wave that has driven Chile's homicide rate up 50% since 2018. "If you are a woman and have children, it's worse."
In recent years, Chile has seen a demographic shift in its homeless population. Although there won't be an official breakdown until the census comes out next year, experts say that the country's affordable housing crunch has pushed more women and children onto the streets.
"Entire families have lost their resources to pay rent," said Ximena Torres, another advocate from Hogar de Cristo.
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Pandemic lockdowns wreaked hardship on Chile's economy while it was struggling to recover from the 2019 mass protests that cost the country at least $3 billion, Chile's national insurance organization estimated.
Lavish pandemic aid — including a measure allowing Chileans to withdraw their pensions early — stoked inflation. The unemployment rate doubled to a record-breaking 13% from 2019 to 2020, making it difficult for many to pay rent. The central bank raised interest rates, lenders hiked the cost of loans and a housing crisis was born.
Housing prices jumped 70% over the last decade, said economist Gonzalo Durán from SOL Foundation, a Chilean think tank.
"I'm extremely broken inside," said Moka Valdés, bursting into tears as she tried to describe the shock of having landed on the street last November after losing her job.
Migration on the rise
Many families bouncing between Chile's tent camps are undocumented migrants lured to the country by its reputation as South America's most successful economy.
Government data shows that nearly 1.6 million of Chile's 19 million inhabitants are registered migrants, up from 1.3 million in 2018. The number of undocumented migrants has also soared, from 16,000 in 2020 to a staggering 53,875 two years later, according to the Observatory of Responsible Migration, a Chilean watchdog.
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As the economy has slumped and public backlash against migrants intensified, Chile tightened visa requirements for Venezuelans — the largest group of recent arrivals. And last year President Boric deployed armed forces to the northern border with Peru, a key migration pass, to check migrants' documents and arrest smugglers.
After fleeing Venezuela and finding life as a migrant intolerable in Colombia and then Ecuador, 34-year-old Karen Salazar dreamed of Chile. Via foot and pick-up truck, Salazar, her husband and their two small children braved freezing cold mountains, rough desert terrain and predatory smugglers, lured by Chile's reputation as a rare upwardly mobile nation in the region.
They didn't find what they hoped for. At first, they lived in a flimsy tent encampment in northern Chile. Then they moved to Santiago, where they slept outside in a public park.
"We know why we're in this situation, but to see the children like this is heart-breaking," Salazar said from the shelter on Boric's street, where she queues for free meals.
As the crisis mounts, aid groups have intensified their pressure on the government. There are fewer than 200 homeless shelters nationwide, barely enough to accommodate 13% of Chile's current homeless population, said local advocate Rodrigo Ibarra Montero.
Upon taking office in March 2022, Boric vowed to build 260,000 new government-sponsored houses during his four-year term. Given the scale of the problem, many fear that will not be enough.
But the president hopes it will.
"We are making steady progress," he insisted in a recent speech inaugurating a new public housing development in Santiago. "You should judge us by the end of our term."
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Train collision in Chile kills at least 2 people, injures 9 others
At least two people were killed and nine others injured Thursday when a train full of passengers collided head-on with another train on a test run just outside the capital of Chile, where fatal railway crashes remain rare.
Police said they were investigating to determine the cause of the crash, which vaulted the test car fully on top of the freight train, which was also carrying passengers.
Photos and video of the scene showed one carriage jackknifed several meters into the air above a badly mangled cargo train. Two dozen emergency vehicles swarmed the tangle of crushed metal as helicopters buzzed overhead in San Bernardo, a district just south of Santiago, the capital.
The eight-car freight train, which was carrying 1,346 tons of copper, was also packed with people, while the other train had 10 workers on board operating a speed test, the state rail company said.
Security camera footage showed both trains traveling at high speed when they slammed into each other. It wasn't immediately clear why the test train hadn't been alerted to the freight train's approach. Officials indicated that a failure in a signaling device might be responsible.
“We have to identify what the causes are and take the corresponding measures,” Transportation Minister Juan Carlos Muñoz told The Associated Press.
Authorities identified the two people killed as crew members on the freight train. Another nine people were injured, including four Chinese nationals. Medical workers described their condition as serious but not life-threatening.
Heavy rains have thrashed Chile in recent days, causing floods that have submerged hundreds of houses and displaced thousands of people. But the downpour had largely eased in Santiago on Thursday and it didn't seem to have contributed to the collision
Deadly train collisions have become rare in the South American country, which significantly boosted its safety consciousness after a 2001 crash involving a passenger train and a bus that killed 20 people and injured many more.
Even as the government has invested in improvements, challenges remain, with four train collisions reported in the last two decades that resulted in around three dozen injuries over that time.
Israeli army tells Palestinians to evacuate parts of Gaza's Rafah before an expected assault
The Israeli army ordered about 100,000 Palestinians on Monday to begin evacuating from the southern city of Rafah in Gaza, signaling that a long-promised ground invasion there could be imminent and further complicating efforts to broker a cease-fire.
Israel’s closest allies, including the United States, have repeatedly said that Israel shouldn’t attack Rafah. The looming operation has raised global alarm over the fate of around 1.4 million Palestinians sheltering there.
Aid agencies have warned that an offensive will worsen Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe and bring a surge of more civilian deaths in an Israeli campaign that in nearly seven months has killed 34,000 people and devastated the territory.
U.S. President Joe Biden spoke Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reiterated U.S. concerns about an invasion of Rafah. Biden said that a cease-fire with Hamas is the best way to protect the lives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, a National Security Council spokesperson said on condition of anonymity to discuss the call before an official White House statement was released.
Hamas and key mediator Qatar said that invading Rafah will derail efforts by international mediators to broker a cease-fire. Days earlier, Hamas had been discussing a U.S.-backed proposal that reportedly raised the possibility of an end to the war and a pullout of Israeli troops in return for the release of all hostages held by the group. Israeli officials have rejected that trade-off, vowing to continue their campaign until Hamas is destroyed.
Netanyahu said Monday that seizing Rafah, which Israel says is the last significant Hamas stronghold in Gaza, was vital to ensuring the militants can’t rebuild their military capabilities and repeat the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war.
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an army spokesman, said about 100,000 people were being ordered to move from parts of Rafah to a nearby Israel-declared humanitarian zone called Muwasi, a makeshift camp on the coast. He said that Israel has expanded the size of the zone and that it included tents, food, water and field hospitals.
It wasn’t immediately clear, however, if that material was already in place to accommodate the new arrivals.
Around 450,000 displaced Palestinians already are sheltering in Muwasi. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it has been providing them with aid. But conditions are squalid, with few bathrooms or sanitation facilities in the largely rural area, forcing families to dig private latrines.
After the evacuation order announcement Monday, Palestinians in Rafah wrestled with having to uproot their extended families once again for an unknown fate, exhausted after months living in sprawling tent camps or crammed into schools or other shelters in and around the city. Few who spoke to The Associated Press wanted to risk staying.
Mohammed Jindiyah said that at the beginning of the war, he had tried to hold out in his home in northern Gaza after Israel ordered an evacuation there in October. He ended up suffering through heavy bombardment before fleeing to Rafah.
He’s complying with the order this time, but was unsure now whether to move to Muwasi or another town in central Gaza.
“We are 12 families, and we don’t know where to go. There is no safe area in Gaza,” he said.
Sahar Abu Nahel, who fled to Rafah with 20 family members including her children and grandchildren, wiped tears from her cheeks, despairing at a new move.
“I have no money or anything. I am seriously tired, as are the children,” she said. “Maybe it’s more honorable for us to die. We are being humiliated.”
Israeli military leaflets were dropped with maps detailing a number of eastern neighborhoods of Rafah to evacuate, warning that an attack was imminent and anyone who stays “puts themselves and their family members in danger.” Text messages and radio broadcasts repeated the message.
UNRWA won’t evacuate from Rafah so it can continue to provide aid to those who stay behind, said Scott Anderson, the agency’s director in Gaza.
“We will provide aid to people wherever they choose to be,” he told the AP.
The U.N. says an attack on Rafah could disrupt the distribution of aid keeping Palestinians alive across Gaza. The Rafah crossing into Egypt, a main entry point for aid to Gaza, lies in the evacuation zone. The crossing remained open Monday after the Israeli order.
Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, condemned the “forced, unlawful” evacuation order and the idea that people should go to Muwasi.
“The area is already overstretched and devoid of vital services,” Egeland said. He said that an Israeli assault could lead to “the deadliest phase of this war.”
Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives in Gaza have killed more than 34,700 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them children and women, according to Gaza health officials. The tally doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. More than 80% of the population of 2.3 million have been driven from their homes, and hundreds of thousands in the north are on the brink of famine, according to the U.N.
Tensions escalated Sunday when Hamas fired rockets at Israeli troops positioned on the border with Gaza near Israel’s main crossing for delivering humanitarian aid, killing four soldiers. Israel shuttered the crossing — but Shoshani said it wouldn’t affect how much aid enters Gaza as others are working.
Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes on Rafah killed 22 people, including children and two infants, according to a hospital.
The war was sparked by the unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which Hamas and other militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. After exchanges during a November cease-fire, Hamas is believed to still hold about 100 Israelis captive as well the bodies of around 30 others.
The mediators over the cease-fire — the United States, Egypt and Qatar — appeared to scramble to salvage a cease-fire deal they had been trying to push through the past week. Egypt said it was in touch with all sides Monday to “prevent the situation from … getting out of control.”
CIA Director William Burns, who had been in Cairo for talks on the deal, headed to meet the prime minister of Qatar, an official familiar with the matter said. It wasn’t clear whether a subsequent trip to Israel that had been planned would happen. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations.
In a fiery speech Sunday evening marking Israel’s Holocaust memorial day, Netanyahu rejected international pressure to halt the war, saying that “if Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.”
On Monday, Netanyahu accused Hamas of “torpedoing” a deal by not budging from its demand for an end to the war and a complete Israeli troop withdrawal in return for the hostages’ release, which he called “extreme.”
Unprecedented wave of narco-violence stuns Argentina city
The order to kill came from inside a federal prison near Argentina's capital. Unwitting authorities patched a call from drug traffickers tied to one of the country's most notorious gangs to collaborators on the outside. Hiring a 15-year-old hit man, they sealed the fate of a young father they didn't even know.
At a service station on March 9 in Rosario, the picturesque hometown of soccer star Lionel Messi, 25-year-old employee Bruno Bussanich was whistling to himself and checking the day's earnings just before he was shot three times from less than a foot away, surveillance footage shows. The assailant fled without taking a peso.
It was the fourth gang-related fatal shooting in Rosario in almost as many days. Authorities called it an unprecedented rampage in Argentina, which had never witnessed the extremes of drug cartel violence afflicting some other Latin American countries.
A handwritten letter was found near Bussanich's body, addressed to officials who want to curb the power drug kingpins wield from behind bars. “We don’t want to negotiate anything. We want our rights," it says. "We will kill more innocent people.”
Shaken residents interviewed by The Associated Press across Rosario described a sense of dread taking hold.
“Every time I go to work, I say goodbye to my father as if it were the last time,” said 21-year-old Celeste Núñez, who also works at a gas station.
The string of killings offer an early test to the security agenda of populist President Javier Milei, who has tethered his political success to saving Argentina’s tanking economy and eradicating narco-trafficking violence.
Since taking office Dec. 10, the right-wing leader has promised to prosecute gang members as terrorists and change the law to allow the army into crime-ridden streets for the first time since Argentina's brutal military dictatorship ended in 1983.
His law-and-order message has empowered the hardline governor of Santa Fe province, which includes Rosario, to clamp down on incarcerated criminal gangs that authorities say orchestrated 80% of shootings last year. Under the orders of Governor Maximiliano Pullaro, police have ramped up prison raids, seized thousands of smuggled cellphones and restricted visits.
“We are facing a group of narco-terrorists desperate to maintain power and impunity,” Milei said after Bussanich was killed, announcing the deployment of federal forces in Rosario. “We will lock them up, isolate them, take back the streets.”
Milei won 56% of the vote in Rosario, where residents praise his focus on a problem largely neglected by his predecessors. But some worry the government's combative approach traps them in the line of fire.
Gangs started their deadly retaliations just hours after Pullaro’s security minister shared photos showing Argentine prisoners crammed together on the floor, heads pressed against each other’s bare backs — a scene reminiscent of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s harsh anti-gang crackdown.
“It’s a war between the state and the drug traffickers,” said Ezequiel, a 30-year-old employee at the gas station where Bussanich was killed. Ezequiel, who gave only his first name for fear of reprisals, said his mother has since begged him to quit. “We’re the ones paying the price.”
Even Milei's supporters have mixed feelings about the crackdown, including Germán Bussanich, the father of the slain gas station worker.
“They're putting on a show and we're facing the consequences," Bussanich told reporters.
A leafy city 300 kilometers (180 miles) northwest of Buenos Aires, Rosario is where revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara was born, Messi first kicked a soccer ball and the Argentine flag was first raised in 1812. But it most recently won notoriety because its homicide numbers are five times the national average.
Tucked into a bend in the Paraná River, Rosario's port morphed into Argentina's drug trafficking hub as regional crackdowns pushed the narcotics trade south and criminals started squirreling away cocaine in shipping containers spirited down the river to markets abroad. Although Rosario never suffered the car bombs and police assassinations gripping Mexico, Colombia and most recently Ecuador, the splintering of street gangs has fueled bloodshed.
“It’s not close to the violence in Mexico because we still have the deterrence capacity of the government in Argentina,” said Marcelo Bergman, a social scientist at the National University of Tres de Febrero in Argentina. “But we need to keep an eye on Rosario because the major threats come not so much from big cartels but when these groups proliferate and diversify.”
Drug traffickers keep a tight grip over Rosario's poor neighborhoods full of young men vulnerable to recruitment. One of them was Víctor Emanuel, a 17-year-old killed two years ago by rival gangsters in an area where street murals pay tribute to slain criminal leaders. No one was arrested.
“My neighbors know who’s responsible,” his mother, Gerónima Benítez, told the AP, her eyes shiny with tears. “I looked for help everywhere, I knocked on the doors of the judiciary, the government. No one answered.”
A fearful existence is all Benítez has ever known. But now, for the first time in Argentina, warring drug traffickers are banding together and terrorizing parts of the city previously considered safe.
Imprisoned gang leaders in Latin America have long run criminal enterprises remotely with the help of corrupt guards. But according to an indictment unveiled last week, incarcerated gang bosses in Argentina have been passing instructions on how to kill random civilians via family visits and video calls.
Court documents say the bosses paid underage hit men up to $450 to target four of the recent victims in Argentina’s third-largest city. The killing of Bussanich, two taxi drivers and a bus driver in less than a week in March, federal prosecutors say, “shattered the peace of an entire society."
Street emptied. Schools closed. Bus drivers picketed. People were too terrified to leave their homes.
“This violence is on another level,” 20-year-old Rodrigo Dominguez said from an intersection where a dangling banner demanded justice for another bus driver slain there weeks earlier. “You can’t go outside.”
Panic was still palpable in Rosario last week, as police swarmed the streets and normally bustling bars closed early for lack of customers. A diner managed by Messi’s family, a draw for fans, reported quiet nights and less profit. Women in one neighborhood said they carry 22‐caliber pistols. Analía Manso, 37, said she was too scared to send her children to school.
Pope Francis last month said he was praying for his countrymen in Rosario.
Assaults and public threats continue. This month, a sign appeared on a highway overpass warning Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich that gangs would extend their offensive to Buenos Aires if the government doesn't back down.
Authorities have sought to reassure the public by sending hundreds of federal agents into Rosario. The AP spent a night with police last week as officers patrolled neighborhoods logging suspicious activity and setting up checkpoints.
Georgina Wilke, a 45-year-old Rosario officer in the explosives squad, said she welcomes federal intervention, including the military, to get crime under control. “We've been hit very hard,” Wilke said.
Omar Pereira, the provincial secretary of public security, promised the efforts represent a shift from failed tactics of the past.
“There were always pacts, implicit or explicit, between the state and criminals,” Pereira said, describing how authorities long looked the other way. “What’s the idea of this government? There is no pact."
But experts are skeptical a tough-on-crime approach will stop drug traffickers from buying control over Argentina’s police and prisons.
“Unless the government fixes its problems with corruption, the crackdown on prisons is unlikely to have any long-term effect,” said Christopher Newton, an investigator at Colombia-based research organization InSight Crime.
For years, Rosario's 1.3 million residents have watched warily as presidents and their promises come and go while the violence endures.
“It’s like a cancer that grows and grows,” said Benítez from her home, its windows protected by wrought-iron bars.
“We, on the outside, live in prison,” she said. “Those inside have everything.”
Brazil Supreme Court justice investigating Elon Musk over fake news and alleged obstruction
A crusading Brazilian Supreme Court justice included Elon Musk as a target in an ongoing investigation over the dissemination of fake news and opened a separate investigation late Sunday into the executive for alleged obstruction.
In his decision, Justice Alexandre de Moraes noted that Musk on Saturday began waging a public “disinformation campaign” regarding the top court's actions, and that Musk continued the following day — most notably with comments that his social media company X would cease to comply with the court's orders to block certain accounts.
“The flagrant conduct of obstruction of Brazilian justice, incitement of crime, the public threat of disobedience of court orders and future lack of cooperation from the platform are facts that disrespect the sovereignty of Brazil,” de Moraes wrote.
Musk will be investigated for alleged intentional criminal instrumentalization of X as part of an investigation into a network of people known as digital militias who allegedly spread defamatory fake news and threats against Supreme Court justices, according to the text of the decision. The new investigation will look into whether Musk engaged in obstruction, criminal organization and incitement.
Brazil’s political right has long characterized de Moraes as overstepping his bounds to clamp down on free speech and engage in political persecution. In the digital militias investigation, lawmakers from former President Jair Bolsonaro’s circle have been imprisoned and his supporters’ homes raided. Bolsonaro himself became a target of the investigation in 2021.
De Moraes' defenders have said his decisions, although extraordinary, are legally sound and necessary to purge social media of fake news as well as extinguish threats to Brazilian democracy — notoriously underscored by the Jan. 8, 2023, uprising in Brazil's capital that resembled the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol.
On Saturday, Musk — a self-declared free speech absolutist — wrote on X that the platform would lift all restrictions on blocked accounts and predicted that the move was likely to dry up revenue in Brazil and force the company to shutter its local office.
“But principles matter more than profit,” he wrote.
He later instructed users in Brazil to download a VPN to retain access if X was shut down and wrote that X would publish all of de Moraes' demands, claiming they violate Brazilian law.
“These are the most draconian demands of any country on Earth!” he later wrote.
Musk had not published de Moraes' demands as of late Sunday and prominent blocked accounts remained so, indicating X had yet to act based on Musk's previous pledges.
Moraes' decision warned against doing so, saying each blocked account that X eventually reactivates will entail a fine of 100,000 reais ($20,000) per day, and that those responsible will be held legally to account for disobeying a court order.
Brazil's attorney general wrote Saturday night that it was urgent for Brazil to regulate social media platforms. "We cannot live in a society in which billionaires domiciled abroad have control of social networks and put themselves in a position to violate the rule of law, failing to comply with court orders and threatening our authorities. Social peace is non-negotiable,” Jorge Messias wrote on X.
Brazil’s constitution was drafted after the 1964-1985 military dictatorship and contains a long list of aspirational goals and prohibitions against specific crimes such as racism and, more recently, homophobia. But freedom of speech is not absolute.
Death toll from heavy rains in southeastern Brazil jumps to 23
Heavy rains in Brazil this weekend have killed at least 23 people between the southeastern states of Rio de Janeiro and Espirito Santo.
Espirito Santos' state government said on Sunday that 15 people died and almost 5,000 are out of their homes due to heavy rains falling since Friday night. Rio authorities reported eight deaths on Saturday.
Thirteen deaths in Espirito Santo were registered in Mimoso do Sul, a countryside city 74 kilometers (46 miles) south of state capital Vitoria.
Rescue teams in both states had to stop their work Friday night because of risks of new landslides, with efforts restarting Saturday afternoon.
Mayors and governors of Brazil's Southeast region have alarmed residents of potential problems for the weekend since Thursday. A government warning for heavy rains in Espirito Santo state is valid until midnight local time.
Heavy rains kill at least 7 in Rio de Janeiro state, 4-year-old rescued after 16 hours under mud
Heavy rains in Rio de Janeiro state have killed at least seven people, authorities said Saturday, while a 4-year-old girl was rescued after more than 16 hours under mud.
The girl was pulled out alive in the city of Petropolis, 69 kilometers (43 miles) north of Rio. Rescue teams had to stop their work Friday night because of risks of new landslides in the region.
The girl's father died as a house was knocked to the ground. She survived because he protected her with his body, members of rescue teams said. Three more people died in the same place.
“My son was a warrior, he spent all that time there and saved his little daughter,” Roberto Napoleão, the grandfather of the girl, told journalists. “You can't imagine what it is like to lose a son. It hurts so much.”
Mayors in the state and Gov. Claudio Castro had alarmed residents of potential problems for the weekend since Thursday.
Firefighters have struggled to reach those hit by heavy rains, many of them residents of long endangered areas. Sniffing dogs were also part of the rescue efforts. Almost 100 people had been saved, authorities said.
Local authorities in Teresopolis, close to Petropolis, said that one person was still missing after the heavy rains.
Meteorologists say the heavy rains that hit Rio state are moving towards the neighboring state of Espirito Santo.
Venezuelan govt keeps arresting opponents as election nears
As Venezuela’s government would have it, President Nicolás Maduro and members of his inner circle have been the target of several conspiracies since last year that could have left them injured or worse.
Few details have been released about the alleged plots. But the government has cited them in the arrests of more than 30 people since January including a prominent human rights attorney and staffers of the leading opposition presidential candidate.
Venezuela orders UN human rights office to close, accusing it of anti-government activity
Local and international nongovernment groups, the United Nations and foreign governments have described the crackdown as a pretext to stifle political opposition ahead of the July 28 president election in which Maduro, in power since 2013, will seek a new six-year term.
The latest arrests took place Wednesday shortly before the country's top prosecutor announced arrest warrants for nine people working with Machado's campaign whom he accused of participating in one plot.
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Oscar Murillo, general coordinator for the Venezuelan human rights group Provea, said officials are coordinating actions of the police, military and civic groups to tamp down on any anti-government activity.
“This has translated into greater political repression and a deepening of the policy of persecution that seeks to break civil society at a time when perhaps the ideal thing would be to be talking about the public policies needed to reverse poverty or inequality in Venezuela,” Murillo said.
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Attorney General Tarek William Saab has described the plots variously as aimed at attacking military installations, killing Maduro and other officials and de-stabilizing the country. He has publicly presented alleged confessions, planning documents, laptops and other items he has characterized as evidence.
Saab on Wednesday accused the nine members of the opposition, including Machado's campaign manager, of being part of a “destabilizing” plot that included demonstrations, a media campaign and plans to attack military barracks. He said two of the nine people, Dignora Hernández and Henry Alviarez — Machado's political coordinator and national coordinator respectively — had already been arrested.
The arrests of Hernández and Alviarez brings to at least six the number of Machado staffers who are in custody over their alleged participation in the plots the government claims to have foiled.
Allowing free-market proponent Machado to run in the July election would offer Venezuela its best chance of a competitive race because no other candidate has anywhere near the level of support, money or political machinery to challenge Maduro. But the self-described socialist government has barred her from office for 15 years — an administrative order upheld by the country's top court in January.
Other members of Venezuela's opposition have urged Machado to stand aside for another contender, but she has insisted on continuing her candidacy — perhaps hoping that international pressure could force Venezuela's establishment to relent on the ban.
“If the regime believes that with these actions they are going to isolate me, let me be clear: My team is Venezuela,” she told reporters Wednesday. She added that her campaign continues organizing across the country and expects “much more than just well wishes” from the international community.
Machado defended her staff, stressing that all allegations against them are false.
The government has not made public any charging documents detailing allegations against the dozens of defendants in the conspiracy cases. Under Venezuelan law, court hearings are open, but in practice people, journalists and sometimes even the defendants' counsels of choice are barred from the courtroom.
Maduro has alleged the U.S. government is behind the plans to assassinate him.
Among the dozens of people taken into custody earlier this year over accusations stemming from the alleged plots is also human rights attorney Rocío San Miguel, whom Saab has identified as a “spy” for one of the conspiracies. Saab has also accused her of having more than a dozen maps that highlighted sensitive military locations that she should not have known about.
“Should the state lower its guard and let these operations go forward, to bathe the country in blood?” Saab said days after San Miguel's Feb. 9 arrest.
San Miguel’s attorney, Juan Gonzalez, said he has not been allowed to see her since her arrest but that she denied all allegations during an initial hearing.
Wednesday’s detentions came hours after an independent panel of experts investigating human rights violations in Venezuela told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva that Maduro's government had increased repression efforts against real or perceived opponents ahead of this year’s presidential election.
“The mission confirms that, as has happened in the past, the authorities invoke real or fictitious conspiracies to intimidate, detain and prosecute people who oppose or criticize the government,” panel head Marta Valiñas told the council, which authorized the investigative mission. “At the same time, the Attorney General’s Office continues to operate as part of the government’s repressive machinery to grant the appearance of legality to the persecution of critical voices."
The panel last year reported that Maduro's government was using defamatory campaigns, detentions, arbitrary criminal proceedings and even torture to curtail democratic freedoms ahead of the election.
“In some cases, the acts of torture or ill-treatment were intended to extract fabricated confessions or false statements," the panel said in its report.
Maduro became interim president in March 2013 after the death of charismatic leader Hugo Chávez's. He narrowly won election weeks later and was re-elected in 2018 in an electoral process widely criticized as fraudulent.
The country has not been without conspiracies against the government in the past.
Less than three months after his re-election, Maduro tied opposition leaders to what the government described as an assassination attempt against the president in which drones with explosives detonated when he was delivering a speech live on television. In 2020, his government foiled an attempted armed invasion to overthrow him, an effort that ended with six insurgents dead and two former Green Berets behind bars.
The latest wave of arrests threatens to unravel a political accord negotiated last year among the U.S. government, the opposition faction it backs and Maduro.
The October agreement focused on conditions for a free and fair election and earned Maduro some relief from U.S. economic sanctions on the country’s oil, gas and mining sectors. But hopes for a more level playing field began fading shortly afterward, and the U.S. already reversed the relief on the gold-mining industry due to what it considers Maduro’s noncompliance.
The administration of President Joe Biden has given Maduro until late April to comply with the deal or expect an end to the remaining relief, which would hurt the country’s oil-dependent economy. The administration confirmed to The Associated Press on Thursday that it has not changed the April deadline.
Brian Nichols, a U.S. assistant secretary of state, earlier this month told attendees of a Washington-based think tank panel that the “incentives” the U.S. and other countries have put forth "have not been sufficient to motivate" Maduro to move toward a competitive election. On Wednesday, he called for the immediate release of “all those unjustly detained.”
“Maduro’s escalating attacks on civil society and political actors are totally inconsistent with Barbados Accord commitments but will not stifle the democratic aspirations of the Venezuelan people,” Nichols tweeted.
Gangs unleash new attacks on upscale areas in Haiti's capital, with at least a dozen killed nearby
Gangs attacked two upscale neighborhoods in Haiti’s capital early Monday in a rampage that left at least a dozen people dead in surrounding areas.
Gunmen looted homes in the communities of Laboule and Thomassin before sunrise, forcing residents to flee as some called radio stations pleading for police. The neighborhoods had remained largely peaceful despite a surge in violent gang attacks across Port-au-Prince that began on Feb. 29.
An Associated Press photographer saw the bodies of at least 12 men strewn on the streets of Pétionville, located just below the mountainous communities of Laboule and Thomassin.
Crowds began gathering around the victims. One was lying face up on the street surrounded by a scattered deck of cards and another found face down inside a pick-up truck known as a “tap-tap” that operates as a taxi. A woman at one of the scenes collapsed and had to be held by others after learning that a relative of hers was killed.
“Abuse! This is abuse!” cried out one Haitian man who did not want to be identified as he raised his arms and stood near one of the victims. “People of Haiti! Wake up!” An ambulance arrived shortly afterward and made its way through Pétionville, collecting the victims.
“We woke up this morning to find bodies in the street in our community of Pétionville,” said Douce Titi, who works at the mayor's office. “Ours is not that kind of community. We will start working to remove those bodies before the children start walking by to go to school and the vendors start to arrive.”
It was too late for some, though. A relative of one of the victims hugged a young boy close to his chest, with his head turned away from the scene.
The most recent attacks raised concerns that gang violence would not cease despite Prime Minister Ariel Henry announcing nearly a week ago that he would resign once a transitional presidential council is created, a move that gangs had been demanding.
Gangs have long opposed Henry, saying he was never elected by the people as they blame him for deepening poverty, but critics of gangs accuse them of trying to seize power for themselves or for unidentified Haitian politicians.
Also on Monday, Haiti’s power company announced that four substations in the capital and elsewhere “were destroyed and rendered completely dysfunctional.” As a result, swaths of Port-au-Prince were without power, including the Cite Soleil slum, the Croix-des-Bouquets community and a hospital.
The company said criminals also seized important documents, cables, inverters, batteries and other items.
As gang violence continues unabated, Caribbean leaders have been helping with the creation of a transitional council. It was originally supposed to have seven members with voting powers. But one political party in Haiti rejected the seat they were offered, and another is still squabbling over who should be nominated.
Meanwhile, the deployment of a U.N.-backed Kenyan police force to fight gangs in Haiti has been delayed, with the East African country saying it would wait until the transitional council is established.
In a bid to curb the relentless violence, Haiti's government announced Sunday that it was extending a nighttime curfew through March 20.