Venezuela
In an act that will continue to heat relations with Venezuela, the head of the Moncloa Palace received this Thursday the former Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González, who flew to Madrid last Sunday to seek asylum there, with the approval of the Bolivarian authorities. The approval of a resolution in the Spanish Congress demanding the government of Pedro Sánchez to recognize him as president-elect has been strongly rejected by chavismo, with calls from the National Assembly to cut all diplomatic and even commercial ties with Spain. Here, among many other things, I am interested in how businesses such as Repsol, which is one of those that has made the most profit from the easing of the U.S. sanctions regime against Venezuela, may react to this threat.
SourceIn August alone, the referred company sent 86,000 bpd of Venezuelan crude oil to the West, while Spanish imports of it this year have already exceeded the volume of the whole of 2023. Could it be that Miraflores has the muscle here? Precisely because of the stress that it would mean for the markets—amid a very convulsive context due to the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East—to apply now the hawkish mode with Venezuela, something that would also have repercussions on the migratory dynamics, the U.S. government itself is being cautious, no matter all the obscure things that happened in the electoral process. So this Thursday the Treasury Department and Foggy Bottom imposed sanctions and visa restrictions on certain Venezuelan officials, but this is as far as the Biden administration wants to go for the time being, especially with the November elections just around the corner.
SourceArgentina
Yesterday, Wednesday, Javier Milei won the support of nearly 90 deputies to stop the reversal of a controversial veto of his blocking legislation to increase the income of retirees. Where is the money going to come from to support the increases? That's the question Milei asks the congressmen who supported the measure, throwing in their faces that they are appealing to a real social issue to force him to do something he continues to reject as policy: issue money. “[Yesterday] 87 [congressmen] heroes put a brake on the fiscal degenerates who tried to destroy the fiscal surplus that we Argentines with so much effort managed to achieve”, said Milei via X.
Although there were protests, strongly repressed, for some it is inexplicable that the social unrest in the face of the situation that thousands of Argentines are living in is not greater. “Politicians still think that Argentines [...] don't see their malicious maneuvers to overthrow a Government that for the first time chooses to tell Argentines an uncomfortable truth instead of a comfortable lie”, added in this sense the owner of Rivadavia's armchair, very focused on macroeconomics under the promise that this will naturally lead to the growth of ordinary Argentines, somehow, someday?
SourceMilei premiered yesterday on X the documentary series about his arrival to power, to which he may have devoted more time in the last months than to looking for a solution to bring light to the poor.
EPISODIO I#LaSerieDeMilei pic.twitter.com/9bGIGxZXkF
— Milei - La Serie (@Milei_Serie) September 11, 2024
The Bolivian East: environmentally compromised
Airplanes of the Bolivian Air Force carried out today a cloud bombardment with silver iodide to “invoke” the necessary rains and thus placate the fierce wildfires affecting vast areas of the east of the country, with the main focus in Santa Cruz, where the air is polluted according to authorities and the experiences that the population has been sharing. “The meteorological conditions [were] favorable to stimulate two cloud formations in the area”, reported the vice minister of Civil Defense. The government of Luis Arce decreed a national and sanitary emergency to request international aid. In Santa Cruz, a region that alone accounts for a third of the national GDP, more than 700 families are affected and some 20 homes were burned, according to official sources.
SourceThe fire has devoured significant extensions of forests and pastures. The traditional burning of undergrowth in preparation for new planting, and more recently the license granted by the government to extend the agricultural frontier (for cattle, and grains) using the same method, together with drought, have made the region more prone to these environmental catastrophes. There are more and more people with breathing problems, eye issues, and headaches due to these harsh environmental conditions, as satellite images reveal shocking levels of carbon monoxide in the air. "The sun practically has an orange hue, it looks just like the moon at night", said a resident. Paraguay and Brazil are also experiencing similar crises.
SourceAnd 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.
