New webinar available: Post-Summer Roundup

The latest current affairs news briefing with LatinNews is now available.

Jon Farmer discusses the future of the Colombian peace process in light of the announcement via video on 29 August that a group of dissident members of the formally demobilised Colombian guerrilla group, the FARC, are returning to the armed fight. The video included Iván Márquez, one of the group’s chief negotiators of the 2016 peace deal with the Colombian government.

Constance Malleret then discusses the controversy over the fires in the Amazon, with tensions rising between the Brazilian government and the international community, as well as with Brazilian environmentalist NGOs, civil society and the business sector, who insist the government must ramp up its efforts to tackle to fires, and clamp down on landowners in the Amazon setting fires to clear land for agribusiness, as well as illegal deforestation. 

Gunther Baumgarten elaborates on the volatile situation in Argentina following the unexpected results from the primaries on 11 August, which sparked a period of turmoil in the country’s financial markets. Following the vote, the peso lost more than 25% of its value against the US dollar, and the country suffered the second-largest single-day drop in any global stock market since 1950.  Just one year on from receiving the biggest International Monetary Fund bailout in history, there is now renewed concern that Argentina is once again at risk of debt default.

Finally, Sarah Sheldon discusses the Guatemalan elections, which saw a surprise landslide victory by Alejandro Giammattei. Turnout was low, with voters disillusioned by persistent corruption. Giammattei’s approach to tackling corruption has not yet been elaborated on, but he has been clear he will not reintroduce CICIG, the UN body set up to tackle impunity in Guatemala, leading some analysts to believe the country’s anti-corruption progress could slow, as well as the decline in homicide rates.

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