Juan P. Villasmil

Mexico has elected its first female president, with preliminary results showing former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum victorious. According to Quick Count, an exercise that the National Electoral Institute produces based on statistical samples from various polling stations, Sheinbaum won with 58-61 percent of the vote. The sixty-one-year-old will also become the first Jewish leader elected in the overwhelmingly Catholic country, as well as possibly the one that has won by the widest margin. She is now doubling her lead over Xóchitl Gálvez, who was backed by a coalition of the National Action (PAN), Institutional Revolutionary (PRI) and Democratic Revolution (PRD) parties. The win solidifies the shift that former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador began.

Venezuela has been leading the United States on, maintaining the pretense that they will ensure that the upcoming presidential elections are free and fair. That's despite the US relieving sanctions, releasing prisoners and months of “diplomacy.” The Nicolás Maduro regime has also gone on offense, threatening to take back the Esequibo, an area now under Guyana’s jurisdiction, where American oil companies have invested billions. This Wednesday, Maduro mocked the Biden administration once again, arresting two high-level officials from opposition candidate María Corina Machado’s team and issuing arrest warrants against several others.

The “Trump of the Tropics,” former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, was indicted Tuesday for falsifying his Covid-19 vaccination status for his Florida vacation. The indictment is the first faced by the conservative leader, who has already been barred from running for office. More are headed his way, in what he is describing as a lawfare effort spearheaded by President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. The indictment was signed by Detective Fábio Alvarez Shor, who says in his report that the former president and his aides “issue[d] their respective [vaccination] certificates and use[d] them to cheat current health restrictions.

The Haitian government declared a state of emergency Sunday evening, following two prison breaks, as major gang leader Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier seeks to oust prime minister Ariel Henry. “Barbecue” — a nickname that originates either from having set people on fire, his mother having worked as a fried chicken vendor or both  — is a former cop who is now the head of the Revolutionary Forces of the G9 Family and Allies.

Jose Antonio Ibarra, a twenty-six-year-old Venezuelan illegal immigrant, was charged in connection with the gruesome murder of Laken Riley, a nursing student at the University of Georgia last week. Another Venezuelan, thirty-two-year-old Renzo Mendoza, was arrested last week on two felony charges for sexually assaulting an underage child in Virginia.  These cases, along with a series of others connected to Venezuelan migrants, have become central to the debate on immigration policy. Tuesday morning, for instance, Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security asking for more information about Ibarra.

Venezuelan presidential hopeful María Corina Machado had filed a claim in December, arguing to the country’s highest court, that a ban prohibiting her from holding office was unconstitutional. The verdict came last week — and the ban was upheld. As south Florida congresswoman María Elvira Salazar told The Spectator, the conclusions reached by the “Chavista-controlled” tribunal were “unfortunate but not surprising.” The upholding of the ban comes after months of negotiations, where the Biden administration eased sectoral sanctions in pursuit of a “path to democracy.” This approach riled up Florida Republicans, a state with a vast Venezuelan-American population.

Venezuela has become a headache for Washington. Just after the Biden administration engineered a rapprochement strategy, Nicolás Maduro did more than just double down on not following through his promises of democratization: he is now pushing to annex neighboring Guyana. These developments, though, should have been anticipated, as Venezuela becomes a crucial part of China’s geopolitical strategy. "Ready for what will be a historic visit to strengthen ties of cooperation and the construction of a new global geopolitics. Good news will rain for the Venezuelan people," said Maduro after landing in the Chinese city of Shenzhen back in September.

At the opening ceremony of the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles last year, President Joe Biden announced the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, which the White House described as “a historic new agreement to drive our hemisphere’s economy recovery and growth and deliver for our working people.” The plan has become the administration’s signature Latin America policy. As noted by the White House, the region matters not solely because it’s where the US is situated, but because it also accounts for 32 percent of global GDP. Even more so, the region is rich in resources that are crucial in the development of emerging technologies.