International roundup

By El Latino Newsroom
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The Mexican government or army has allegedly continued to use spyware designed to hack into the cellphones of activists, despite a pledge by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to end such practices.

Press freedom groups said they found evidence of recent attempts to use the Israeli spyware program Pegasus against activists investigating human rights abuses by the Mexican army. 

The Pegasus infection was confirmed through a forensic investigation by the University of Toronto group Citizen Lab.

According to a report by the press freedom group Article 19, The Network for the Defense of Digital Rights and Mexican media organizations, the targets included rights activist Raymundo Ramos.

Ramos has worked for years documenting military and police abuses, including multiple killings, in the drug cartel-dominated border city of Nuevo Laredo. 

Ramos’ cellphone was apparently infected with Pesgasus spyware in 2020.

“They do not like us documenting these types of cases, for them to be made public and have criminal complaints filed,” Ramos said.

The other victims included journalist and author Ricardo Raphael in 2019 and 2020, and an unnamed journalist for the online media outlet Animal Politico.

Daniel Moreno, the director of Animal Politico, said “if the president didn’t know, that is very serious because it means the army engaged in spying without his consent. If the president did know, that is also very serious.”

López Obrador took office in December 2018 pledging to end government spying. 

The president said he himself had been the victim of government surveillance for decades as an opposition leader.

“We are not involved in that. Here we have decided not to go after anybody. Before, when we were in the opposition, we were spied on,” Lopez Obrador said in 2019, in response to questions about the use of Pegasus.

The report alleged the Mexican army has requested price quotes for surveillance programs from companies connected to the distribution of Pegasus, which the company says is sold only to governments.

The report said the hacker group Guacamaya found army documents listing requests for price quotes from 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Mexico had the largest list — about 15,000 phone numbers — among more than 50,000 reportedly selected by NSO clients for potential surveillance.

COLOMBIA

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday backed Colombia’s recent efforts to rethink its drug policy and said the Biden administration and Colombia’s newly elected government will work together on rural development programs and interdiction efforts, while sharing intelligence on drug trafficking groups.

The comments came after a meeting between Blinken and Colombian President Gustavo Petro in Bogota, the first stop on a tour of South America in which the Secretary of State will also visit Chile and Peru.

“We strongly support the holistic approach that president Petro’s administration is taking to counter narcotics through comprehensive rural security, justice, development, environmental protection, supply reduction as well as demand reduction including in the United States,” Blinken said in a press conference.

Last month Petro spoke at the U.N. General Assembly and said that U.S.-led efforts to fight drug trafficking around the world had been “a failure.” 

He accused the U.S. and other developed countries of pursuing a punitive approach towards the drug trade that harmed small farmers in developing nations.

Following the meeting with Blinken, Petro said both sides had spoken about “more flexible” ways of tackling the drug trade that seek to reduce production and consumption across the hemisphere.

Petro said coca farmers in remote areas of Colombia should be granted land titles, so that they can be more easily integrated into the legal economy. 

He suggested the U.S. support a $7 billion scheme to buy land for landless farmers in Colombia, and said an international fund should be created to back projects that would pay some coca farmers to leave the drug trade and become protectors of the Amazon rainforest.

Colombia has been struggling to control cocaine production as several armed groups take over rural areas abandoned by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia following their 2016 peace deal with the government, while government institutions are slow to arrive.

Petro said tougher action is required against white collar criminals who profit from the cocaine trade in Colombia and the United States, but argued that law enforcement should not be directed against poor farmers who grow coca to eke out a living in remote areas.

The Colombian president said the aerial fumigation of coca crops with chemicals would continue to be banned in order to protect the environment, but added that his administration will seek to manually eradicate “industrial sized” coca fields run by organized crime.

BRAZIL

Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, two diametrically opposed candidates for Brazil’s presidency, have started a four-week race to pursue votes ahead of a winner-take-all runoff.

After garnering more than 90% of the vote in Sunday’s first round, leaving their competitors far behind, incumbent President Bolsonaro and ex-President da Silva are already eyeing options that can push them over the top, whether political alliances or endorsements from candidates now eliminated.

Political analysts say Bolsonaro will seek to capitalize on an unexpectedly strong showing by the right wing as a whole to shore up support from politicians seeking advantageous alliances while da Silva — who won the first-round vote — reaches out to moderates.

The election will determine whether a leftist returns to the helm of the world’s fourth-largest democracy or whether Bolsonaro can advance his far-right agenda for another term.

Many polls had indicated leftist da Silva had a significant lead, with some suggesting he could even clinch a first-round victory. 

Most showed margins that neared or exceeded double digits, but Bolsonaro came within just five points of da Silva, forcing an Oct. 30 runoff.

While da Silva’s tally of 48.4% of the vote was within most polls’ margins of error, Bolsonaro’s 43.2% far exceeded most of them. 

The president’s allies running for Congress and governorships also outperformed polls.

“The far-right has shown great resilience in the presidential and in the state races,” said Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo.

Speaking after the results, da Silva said he was excited to have a few more weeks of campaigning and the opportunity to go face-to-face with Bolsonaro and “make comparisons between the Brazil he built with the Brazil we built during our administrations.”

“I always thought that we were going to win these elections. And I tell you that we are going to win this election. This, for us, is just an extension,” da Silva said.

Meanwhile, Bolsonaro seemed to appeal to poorer voters, who make up a significant chunk of da Silva’s base. 

He highlighted high inflation that has boosted the cost of food and has hurt the approval ratings of leaders worldwide.