SourceEcuadorians will once again be able to live without the crippling scourge of power outages they have suffered since last September. A crushing drought joined the chronic lack of attention to the thermal generation plant to configure a very complex context for the national electric system. Scheduled blackouts extended up to 14 hours a day at the most critical moment of the power contingency, which, as expected, has had a notable impact on productive activity. The outlook has now improved thanks to the recovery of—and the incorporation of new—power generation capacity in the order of 800 MW, the return of energy imports from Colombia—which also faced a crisis peak recently—, and better weather. But the supply still does not cover the demand, so seven companies linked to steel, cement and mining production will continue to be limited in consumption. Experts point out that the outages may return next year if appropriate measures to improve the resilience of the system are not taken.
#24Horas | Técnicos energéticos aseguran que los apagones en Ecuador podrían retomarse en el 2025 si no se toman medidas en el sistema eléctrico.
— Teleamazonas (@teleamazonasec) December 19, 2024
Vía: @Astrid_SingreTA pic.twitter.com/VIkrlRTWQI
Contrasts
While Ecuador receives around 5.11 billion dollars in international financing this year from powerful lenders such as the Inter-American Development Bank, the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Cuba remains under a relentless sanctions regime that prevents it from accessing the same mechanisms from an even more precarious socioeconomic situation. While Ecuador was able to solve in a few months the above-commented serious energy contingency, the Island faces enormous obstacles to pay the brave suppliers who dare to supply it with crude oil—the state importing company is designated by the U.S. Treasury Department—and to maintain its decrepit thermal generation plant. Currently, the sanctions regime that was conceived during John F. Kennedy's administration is reinforced by the unfair inclusion of the country in the list of State sponsors of terrorism—the last nail in the Cuban financial coffin—, issues that led to the holding of a popular rally this Friday in Havana.
SourceMexico
Seven inmates were killed last Thursday in a confusing confrontation with police, who entered the prison with the intention of extracting two high-risk prisoners. The security forces were greeted with a barrage of gunfire, which according to the official narrative generated a forceful response on their part. The event occurred in the southern state of Tabasco, which has been progressively sinking into a spiral of violence typical of other geographical contexts in Mexico. Ten individuals, including police and inmates, were injured in the riot. Simultaneously to the initial armed aggression against prison authorities, the inmates also set fire to different areas of the facility. One of the two inmates of interest offered strong resistance together with a score of fellow prisoners, five female relatives violently entered the prison, while it was reported that vehicles and stores were burned in the town of Villahermosa, presumably ordered from the prison itself. Up to October alone, there is an annual increase of about 183% in murders in Tabasco.
“Nos están tirando a matar. ¡Nos matarán!”, así se vivió el terror dentro del penal de #Villahermosa, #Tabasco. Un motín terminó con enfrentamientos a balazos y siete internos murieron. Los desmanes llegaron a las calles, luego de que los reos pidieron ayuda en redes sociales: pic.twitter.com/FZRR6W1uiI
— Nacho Lozano (@nacholozano) December 20, 2024
More political Aztec blood
The young mayor of the town of Tancanhuitz was fatally shot along with his secretary and two bodyguards last Sunday, when armed men intercepted the vehicle in which they were traveling, authorities reported. In other political assassinations in recent days, a federal congressman and a state magistrate have been killed. In the violent city of Culiacán, Sinaloa state, the member of the team assisting a high-ranking official of the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection, focused on combating organized crime, was also killed this week. Amid infighting in the Sinaloa cartel—between followers of “El Mayo” Zambada and the sons of “El Chapo” Guzman—500 people have been killed since September in the whole state.
On the migratory drama 👇
Migrants don't want to pay (for a smuggler), but I think we will become their only, and safest, option. A BIG, MUST-READ REPORT from Reuters.
A good annual Latin American resume from AP, in photos 👇
AP FOTOS: Latinoamérica acaba 2024 con la huella de desastres naturales y un clima político agitado.https://t.co/0bpRSHw03g pic.twitter.com/Izt8dVy1tv
— AP Noticias (@AP_Noticias) December 20, 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.
It occurs to me that the cartels are derived from CIA power, and the disruption of Mexico is being effected to prevent that CIA power from being surmounted by the government of Mexico, which competes with the cartels for political control. [edit: both the CIA and Mexico claim authority to prohibit sovereign people from determining themselves which substances they can consume, and this prohibition similarly degrades society globally, being imposed in Ecuador, Colombia, and the USA no less than elsewhere, allowing criminal imposition of authority over society that is clearly and obviously horrifically degrading civil society with the violence competition between cartels, within cartels, and between governments and cartels causes. /end edit] Cuba represents the strongest infliction of that CIA power against a jurisdiction, effected through commercial mechanisms with the results observed. While these powerful actors cannot be directly opposed, they are necessarily focused each on the other, and people remain hapless as long as they remain dependent on centralized polities.
Adopting decentralized means of production can enable the people to reduce their dependence on those polities competing to control the population they both intend to reduce and maintain dependent on the competing polities. I know your heart is for your people, and also that you recognize humanity, and not only those confined to a geographical region, are people you have commonality with and care for. It is this same humanity I have the same commonality with and share that human concern for. This is why I have shared some of the decentralized means of production with you I have learned of, because adoption of these means of producing necessities are not dependent on polities focused on international competition to control jurisdictions and their people, whom are left unserved by polities expending their resources on that competition.
Aquaponics requires no electricity to implement in it's simplest form, being merely a 55 gallon barrel of catfish fed table scraps from which water is manually dipped with buckets to hydroponically feed crops that cleanse the water that can then be returned to the catfish. A biofilter is required to fully cleanse the water of pollutants and achieve 100% reclylability, but I am not convinced Cuba faces such a dire water shortage that the provision of water suitable for catfish (far lower than necessary for people to consume) is out of reach.
Graphene ink can be printed on recycled PET beverage containers to create DIY solar panels, and graphene is just carbon, ridiculously common and inexpensive that can be transformed into graphene inexpensively (although technically demanding). Concrete doped with carbon black (very technically simple, and equally common) using salt water as an electrolyte can provide supercapacitor storage of electricity. These three advances in decentralized means of production can liberate people from dependence for these critical necessities that extant polities are failing to provide, and that are causing people to suffer the lack of.
I have provided links to these technologies in previous comments to you, and I hope there is some action underway to adopt them where you and people you care for are suffering their lack. I do not mention independent means of securing people from violent oppression in order to not cause any danger of suppression to anyone concerned, but technological advance in every field of industry today advances decentralized means of production as the most economically productive means available. The most advanced technology is the most productive technology, which is why it replaces obsolete means continually. As this replacement is occurring across every field of industry simultaneously today, a clinal boundary is being transcended that will globally transform civil society and profoundly reward merit in adoption of independence from warring polities that I hope you and yours will exemplify.
Thanks!