International roundup

By Agencies
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In a victory speech, Brazil’s president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promised to reverse a surge in deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

“We will once again monitor and do surveillance in the Amazon. We will fight every illegal activity,” leftist da Silva said in his speech at a hotel in downtown Sao Paulo. “At the same time, we will promote sustainable development of communities in the Amazon.”

To achieve this in his third term, he will have to boost environmental law enforcement, face a hostile Congress and deal with state governors who have strong ties with the defeated far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

If he is serious, the job will be immense. 

The area deforested in Brazil’s Amazon reached a 15-year high from August 2020 to July 2021, according to official figures. 

Satellite monitoring shows the trend in 2022 is on track to surpass the previous year.

On the ground, the main challenge will be to rebuild environmental agencies and Brazil’s Indigenous bureau. Da Silva also promised to create a ministry of Indigenous affairs headed by an Indigenous person.

Under Bolsonaro, these have been led by appointees close to the agribusiness sector, which has long pushed for the legalization of land robbing and opposes the creation of protected areas such as Indigenous territories.

In 2023, the agribusiness sector, which backed Bolsonaro’s failed reelection bid, will control about half of the Congress. In recent years, the caucus advanced bills to ease environmental legislation.

At the state level, six out of nine Amazon governors are Bolsonaro allies, most with strong ties with agribusiness. One of them, Marcos Rocha, from Rondonia state, got reelected two days after he made a high profile bid to burnish his anti-environment credentials by removing the protection on a conservation land roughly twice the size of two New York City.

Da Silva has to use his support at the ballot box to promote his environmental agenda, according to Caetano Scannavino, coordinator of Health & Happiness, an Amazon non-profit that supports sustainable projects in the Tapajos basin.

“Most Brazilians have expressed opposition to deforestation and violation of Indigenous rights,” Scannavino told The Associated Press in a phone interview. 

“Da Silva has to seize this clamor and gather academics, nonprofits, and the more responsible sector of the agribusiness. The challenge is to make the environment a State policy, independent of left or right.”

On the international front, da Silva’s promises to preserve the world’s largest rainforest have already found supporters. The Norwegian government indicated it will resume its performance-based multi-million-dollar donations to finance anti-deforestation policies.

“Norway looks forward to revitalizing our extensive climate and forest partnership with Brazil,” the minister of Climate and Environment, Espen Barth Eide, wrote on his Twitter account.

MEXICO

At least two clandestine graves holding human remains were found in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, state authorities said this week.

The state prosecutor’s office did not say how many bodies were found in the graves in Irapuato, but the search collective Hasta Encontrarte, or “Until You’re Found,” previously said that 41 bags with human remains were found in the graves.

The remains were transported to the forensics unit that handles identifications, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. 

It said the removal followed days of work at the site by forensic specialists, anthropologists and search collectives.

Such collectives of volunteers, usually relatives of the missing, work across Mexico. There are more than 100,000 registered disappeared in Mexico.

Local media had reported that the graves were found after neighbors reported to the police and the collective that they had seen a dog with a human leg. 

Guanajuato is one of six states that account for half of Mexico’s homicides.

CUBA

A total of 18 former Latin American and Caribbean leaders have signed a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden asking the United States to remove its six-decade embargo on Cuba in the wake of devastation inflicted by Hurricane Ian.

The letter, also requests that Biden remove Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism for providing refuge to leaders of a guerrilla group that is now set to reenter peace talks with Colombia, an American ally.

The letter comes as Cuba is suffering its worst economic, political and energy crises of the century so far, spurring a migratory exodus from the island. 

It was exacerbated by Hurricane Ian, which walloped western Cuba before hitting southern Florida late last month.

“We ask you, Mr. President, to take into account this dramatic situation that thousands of Cubans are experiencing and do whatever is necessary to lift those restrictions that affect the most vulnerable,” the letter reads.

Among the signatories are former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, two former Colombian leaders — Juan Manuel Santos and Ernesto Samper — and former leaders from Bolivia to Belize.

All of the signers are leftists or centrists. 

Notably absent were signatures from right-wing politicians, underscoring the deep divisions that the Caribbean island still provokes in the region.

The United Nations General Assembly is scheduled to vote this week on a resolution to condemn the trade embargo and it is expected to pass again for the 30th consecutive year.

Yet former Colombian President Ernesto Samper said in an interview that he doesn’t want the letter to be viewed as a political statement.

“At this moment, what worries us is that the ones paying the cost… are Cubans who are going without food, medicine or electricity,” Samper told the AP.

The trade embargo was imposed in 1962 as the Cuban revolution veered toward socialism. 

It has restricted Cuba’s access to a vast array of products, as well as international aid, and financial resources.

Island officials say the restrictions have made it harder to recover from the hurricane, which destroyed 14,000 homes and caused long-term damage to the country’s electrical grid.

While the Obama administration eased many sanctions, they came back into full force under the Trump administration, which justified the sanctions by re-designating Cuba as a state sponsor for terrorism for its refusal to extradite 10 leaders of Colombia’s biggest remaining guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army.

But that order was lifted when Colombia’s first leftist leader was inaugurated in August and announced new peace talks with the group. 

The rebel leaders recently left Cuba to hold negotiations in Venezuela.

Biden has eased a few measures, but has also been sharply critical of the Cuban government’s harsh treatment of protesters last year, which also hardened sentiment against concessions to the Cuban government among Cuban-Americans, a key voting bloc in Florida.