Peru’s interim president, José Jerí, has denied lying to the country and claimed he was the victim of a plot to discredit him amid a growing political scandal over his secretive meetings with Chinese businessmen. Jerí, 39, who took office in October after his predecessor Dina Boluarte was forced out, told a congressional oversight committee on Wednesday that he had been the target of a smear campaign designed to destabilise the country ahead of elections in April. “It could be understood to be a trap,” he told the committee after…
Tag: Americas
What would happen if every state acted like Donald Trump’s America? | Kenneth Roth
What is wrong with resurrecting the prerogative of major powers to claim a sphere of influence in which they dictate and others must follow? That idea informs the “Donroe Doctrine” behind the US invasion of Venezuela to seize Nicolás Maduro. Donald Trump seems to believe that, as the world’s strongest military power, the United States should be allowed to invade other countries at will. Trump’s homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, says “the real world” is “governed by strength”, by “power”, so we should get used to it. There is a…
Carney heads to Beijing as Trump’s America First agenda forces Canada into trade rethink
During the final stretch of Canada’s spring election campaign, Mark Carney told a debate audience that China was the country’s “biggest geopolitical risk”. He pointed to its attempts to meddle in elections and its recent efforts to disrupt Canada’s Arctic claims. When Carney’s government plane touches down in Beijing this week, it will be the first time a Canadian prime minister has been welcomed in nearly a decade. The trip, undertaken amid the rupturing of global economic and political alliances, reflects a desire by Ottawa to mend a broken relationship…
Guián review – celebration of multicultural identity through a Chinese grandmother in Costa Rica
Nicole Chi Amén, a Costa Rican woman of Chinese descent, has always been on the outside looking in. The opening scene of her moving debut feature replicates this predicament visually: her face pressed against a metal barricade, she looks through a hole in the opaque facade with interest. The camera is observing, too, and the sight of a house being torn down gradually comes into view. This was once the home of her maternal grandmother, a Guangdong native who emigrated to Costa Rica more than 60 years ago. Conceived in…
US attack on Venezuela will decide direction of South America’s vast mineral wealth
The US’s first overt attack on an Amazon nation last weekend is a new phase in its extractivist rivalry with China. The outcome will decide whether the vast mineral wealth of South America is directed towards a 21st-century energy transition or a buildup of military power to defend 20th-century fossil fuel interests. Although this onslaught was ostensibly aimed at one corrupt dictatorship in a miserably dysfunctional country, the ramifications are far wider. Venezuela’s oil is the obvious – but not the only – objective. When the former Guardian journalist Seumas…
Trump’s new world order is being born – and Venezuela is just the start | Owen Jones
The US president has been quite clear that Cuba, Mexico, Colombia and Greenland are in his sights. We must believe him As Venezuela’s skyline lit up under US bombs, we were watching the morbid symptoms of a declining empire. That may sound counterintuitive. After all, the US has kidnapped a foreign leader, and Donald Trump has announced that he will “run” Venezuela. Surely this looks less like decay than intoxication: a superpower high on its own force. But Trump’s great virtue, if it can be called that, is candour. Previous…
‘Mad fishing’: the super-size fleet of squid catchers plundering the high seas
In a monitoring room in Buenos Aires, a dozen members of the Argentinian coast guard watch giant industrial-fishing ships moving in real time across a set of screens. “Every year, for five or six months, the foreign fleet comes from across the Indian Ocean, from Asian countries, and from the North Atlantic,” says Cdr Mauricio López, of the monitoring department. “It’s creating a serious environmental problem.” Just beyond Argentina’s maritime frontier, hundreds of foreign vessels – known as the distant-water fishing fleet – are descending on Mile 201, a largely…
US foes and allies denounce Trump’s ‘crime of aggression’ in Venezuela at UN meeting
The US has faced widespread condemnation for a “crime of aggression” in Venezuela at an emergency meeting of the United Nations security council. Brazil, China, Colombia, Cuba, Eritrea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and Spain were among countries that on Monday denounced Donald Trump’s decision to launch deadly strikes on Venezuela and snatch its leader, Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, to stand trial in the US. “The bombings on Venezuelan territory and the capture of its president cross an unacceptable line,” Sérgio França Danese, the Brazilian ambassador to the…
Trump’s attack leaves China worried about its interests in Venezuela | Amy Hawkins
Hours before his life and the fate of his country was changed dramatically, Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, was exchanging smiles and handshakes with a Chinese delegation in the presidential palace in Caracas. On Friday evening, shortly before he was seized by US forces, Maduro wrote on Telegram of his meeting with China’s special envoy for Latin American affairs, Qiu Xiaoqi: “A fraternal meeting that reaffirms the strong bonds of brotherhood and friendship between China and Venezuela. Through thick and thin!” Those bonds will be put to the test now that…
Russia and China pledge support for Venezuela as Trump ratchets up pressure on Maduro
China and Russia have expressed support for Venezuela as it confronts a US blockade of sanctioned oil tankers, while Donald Trump continues to ramp up his pressure campaign on the South American country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. Amid reports of slowing activity at Venezuelan ports, the US president again called for Maduro to leave power, and reiterated that the US would keep or sell the oil it had seized off the coast of Venezuela in recent weeks. Asked if the goal was to force Maduro from power, Trump told reporters: “I…