US would be willing to grant amnesty to Maduro

The US government “continues a long-term effort to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to relinquish power in exchange for amnesty,” the Wall Street Journal yesterday.

“The U.S. has discussed pardoning Maduro and his top lieutenants who are being charged by the Justice Department, three people familiar with the Biden administration’s deliberations said. One of the people said the U.S. has “put everything on the table” to convince Maduro to leave before his term ends in January. Another person familiar with the discussions said the U.S. would be open to assurances that those regime figures will not be pursued for extradition.”

McClatchy reports that the Biden administration has not offered Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his advisers any form of amnesty to transfer power in Venezuela, “but is open to all possibilities as it works to find a way out of the country’s political crisis,” a senior administration official said.

But instead of taking the lead in pushing Maduro to admit defeat, the Biden administration is backing efforts by left-wing Latin American governments to convince him to surrender, the Washington Post.

Brazil, Colombia and Mexico are leading diplomatic efforts to bring the Venezuelan government to the negotiating table with the opposition. The leaders of the three countries will soon hold a virtual meeting and then talk with opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia and Maduro, reports Globe.

Maduro has ignored repeated calls to present full voting results. If he does not, “Brazil will not recognize Maduro’s triumph, but it will also not break relations with Venezuela. Our relationship will be tense,” a Brazilian diplomat said. Globe journalist Janaína Figueiredo. Russian and Chinese support is key to Maduro’s resistance to US demands, she writes separately in Globe.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula’s stance toward Venezuela “has revived familiar debates about Brazil’s foreign strategy,” writes Oliver Stuenkel in America’s Quarterly“In the same way that Brazil responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it has tried to develop a ‘neutral strategy,’ which has predictably enraged those who say the facts are too clear to justify waiting.”

More Venezuela

• Maduro responded with a scathing response to an offer from his Panamanian counterpart, Jose Raul Mulino, to grant safe passage to a third country to facilitate a political transition, accusing the Panamanian president of being swept along by US interests.Reuters)

• Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court say they are “actively monitoring” events in Venezuela, where the government has launched a brutal crackdown on the opposition following July’s presidential elections.Associated Press)

• “The Venezuelan government has launched a furious campaign against anyone who challenges the announced results of the election, unleashing a wave of repression that human rights groups say is unlike anything the country has experienced in recent decades,” the New York Times.

• Venezuela’s main opposition leader, María Corina Machado, said this weekend that Maduro has unleashed a horrific “campaign of terror” in an attempt to remain in power.Guardian)

• “Venezuela’s Supreme Court said Saturday it had received no evidence from the opposition coalition in the disputed July 28 presidential election and warned that its decision to determine the winner would be final,” reports ReutersThe opposition said it had not handed over the counts it had obtained due to security concerns. The country’s Supreme Court is loyal to the government.

• Venezuela’s political opposition was able to count the votes despite obstacles put in place by authorities. It was “a carefully planned operation in which tens of thousands of opposition volunteers worked together to reveal the true outcome of the election,” the Guardian.

Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada said in a statement Saturday that he was ambushed and secretly flown to the United States after being invited to a meeting believed to involve the governor of Sinaloa state. Zambada said he was misled by the son of a former Sinaloa ally, Joaquín Guzmán, “further evidence of a dramatic rift between two leading cartel factions,” the Washington Post.Reuters)

U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar confirmed that Zambada was brought to the United States against his will. “This was an operation between cartels, where one turned in the other,” Salazar said. He denied that the U.S. used resources or violated Mexican sovereignty in Zambada’s extradition. (Associated Press, The country, Washington Post, Jordanada)

The country reports that López Obrador’s Mexican government was taken by surprise by the arrest – and that the case has fueled tensions between Mexico and the US

There are conflicting accounts of how Zambada was arrested. Some versions say he made a deal with the DEA to turn himself in. A lawyer for the younger Joaquín Guzmán, who was detained with Zambada in Texas two weeks ago, denies he lured the older drug lord onto a plane or made a deal with U.S. authorities.

Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha denied a planned meeting with Zambada, saying he was not even in the state that day.The country) Rocha has always denied collaborating with cartels, but the Sinaloa investigative journal RioDoce reported that when Rocha ran for governor in 2021, cartel members contributed to his victory by kidnapping more than 20 political operatives who worked for his opponent on the eve of the election, the Washington Post.

Brazil

• Sixty-two people were killed Friday in a plane crash carrying passengers en route to São Paulo, the world’s deadliest plane crash since 2023, when 72 people died aboard a plane in Nepal. (New York Times, Associated Press, AFP, Reuters)

• A proposed commercial waterway through Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands could spell the “end of an entire biome” and devastate hundreds of thousands of hectares of land through wildfires, the Guardian.

• Political proponents say the waterway would reduce the cost and time of exporting agricultural products, but critics say it would cause irreparable damage to the wetland and wildlife, the Guardian.

• Brazil’s Lula government steps up crackdown on criminals in vast Yanomami indigenous reserve — Financial Times

• Brazilian officials hope a new testing and treatment regimen for malaria will help them eliminate the disease from the country by 2035 — Guardian.

Haiti

• Haiti’s interim government is unlikely to meet the February 2026 deadline to install a legally elected president, the Miami HeraldDuring a meeting with international partners last week, interim Prime Minister Garry Conille requested an assessment mission to evaluate the gaps in the organization of free and fair elections. He also stressed the importance of improving security so that the country can hold elections.

• The call comes as a Kenyan-led security assistance mission has pushed gangs into rural Haiti in response to a “failure to engage with violence,” the Miami Herald.

• “The international effort to strengthen Haitian police and a transitional government has eased conditions in some parts of Port-au-Prince, experts say, but gang members have refocused their attacks on the outskirts, looting towns that had escaped their campaign of killings, kidnappings and rapes,” the New York Times.

Ecuador

• Prisoners in Ecuador’s jails have been allowed family visits for the first time in months since President Daniel Noboa declared an internal armed conflict in his response to criminal gangs. There have been allegations of torture and human rights abuses in the military-run prisons, reports The country.

Regional

• Much has been written about the intersection of Silicon Valley technomancers and US politics, but “the enormous and growing influence of ‘futurists’ in Latin America has been much less noted – as has their increasing influence on, and affection for, autocratic right-wing leaders in the region,” writes Joshua Collins in Pirate Wire Services.

• “The impending extradition of another alleged key player in Sebatian Marset’s money laundering operations marks his latest setback as the drug trafficker’s network appears to be unraveling,” the report said. InSight Crime.

El Salvador

• In a private cocktail at the start of his second term, before his allies, nationally and internationally, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele defended the legality of his re-election and his international legitimacy. He celebrated the ongoing state of emergency that suspends constitutional guarantees to tackle gangs, and said that there are mothers who hand over their own children to the authorities.The lighthouse)

• Last month, Bukele announced a series of economic measures as Salvadorans grow increasingly concerned about food inflation. “The first phase of the Economic Plan, which focuses on food and nutrition, includes the creation of 30 agricultural marketsor “farmers markets,” as he has dubbed them in English on social media,” he reports The lighthouse.

Argentina

• Allegations of gender-based violence against former Argentine President Alberto Fernández are likely to boost the popularity of current President Javier Milei and further shield him from the political costs of his austerity campaign, reports say. Bloomberg.

• Marcelo García compares Milei’s government to that of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who faced violent protests last week that left 21 people dead. Milei’s plan to attract investment “places Argentina closer to a category that experts call an enclave economy, one in which some sectors flourish but the general public is not necessarily attached to the benefits,” García explained.Buenos Aires Times)

Peru

• The Peruvian government has passed a law that prevents prosecutions for crimes against humanity committed before 2002. The measure benefits former President Alberto Fujimori, who has been convicted of human rights violations in the past and is currently facing a trial in which prosecutors are seeking to sentence him to 25 years in prison for the murder of six farmers in 1992. President Dina Boluarte enacted the law despite an order from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in July that told Peruvian officials the law violated international law.Associated Press)