Claudia Sheinbaum today became Mexico’s first female president, inheriting the mantle from her political mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who bequeathed her his “Fourth Transformation.”

Sheinbaum shared her administration’s logo yesterday, an image that seeks to recognize generations of “women who have been made invisible by history, but have continued to fight for their rights, dreams and desires,” the future president’s team explained in a fact sheet. animal policy)

The 62-year-old former mayor of Mexico City and lifelong leftist campaigned on a promise of continuity but is expected to bring her own technocratic style of governance to the presidency, the Associated Press reports.

“Two seemingly contradictory words, continuity and change, will be the keys to his mandate, although it is not yet clear which of them will prevail,” El País reports.

“Analysts say Ms. Sheinbaum’s government will try to combine her technocratic and pragmatic approach to governing with Mr. López Obrador’s populist rhetoric,” the New York Times reports.

Half of the next presidential cabinet will consist of AMLO officials, Animal Político reports.

Sheinbaum must implement a number of complex constitutional reforms implemented last month, the latest legacy of her political mentor: judicial reforms that will entail the election of more than a thousand judges next year, and the formalization of militarized internal security, now with the legal ability to investigate, commit crimes and arrest people, Animal Político reports.

Sheinbaum inherits AMLO’s Fourth Transformation – El País discusses the state of Mexico, looking at labor, access to healthcare, education and public safety.

Immediate crises include the Sinaloa cartel war in Culiacán and hurricane-ravaged Acapulco (see briefing below).

More Mexico

• AMLO’s efforts to investigate the case of the 43 Ayotzinapa students have collapsed under political pressure, argues Omar Gómez Trejo, former special prosecutor for the Ayotzinapa case, in El Faro. “…The investigation uncovered so much evidence of collusion between authorities – including soldiers – and organized crime that there was internal pressure to stop it.”

• Municipal police in the Mexican state of Sinaloa have been taken off the streets after the army confiscated their weapons. “Historically, the Mexican military has confiscated weapons from local police forces they distrust, either because they suspect that some local officers work for drug gangs or because they suspect they are carrying unregistered, private sidearms that make it more difficult to to detect abuse,” reports the associated press.

• Seventeen people were killed along Mexico’s southern Pacific coast after “John” hit the coast once as a hurricane and again as a tropical storm last week, the Associated Press reported.

Hunger in Haiti

Nearly 6,000 people in Haiti are going hungry, while nearly half of the country’s population of more than 11 million people is facing crisis levels of hunger or worse, according to a new Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

The 5,636 people facing famine, the worst level, are living in makeshift shelters in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, held hostage by gangs who have prevented vital supplies from reaching the capital. The report notes that another 2 million Haitians face severe hunger. (Associated Press)

The IPC also cited high inflation as an aggravating factor, at a time when food spending accounts for up to 70% of the household budget, Reuters reports.

More Haiti

• The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern about threats against AyiboPost’s editor-in-chief Widlore Mérancourt by Haitian gang leader Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier following his article about a Reuters journalist who gave Cherizier balaclavas, alcohol and cigarettes as gifts.

Brazil

• A Brazilian judge convicted Edilson Barbosa dos Santos of obstructing the investigation into the 2018 murder of Rio de Janeiro councilor Marielle Franco and sentenced him to five years in prison. It is the first conviction in the case, although former police officer Ronnie Lessa has confessed to killing Franco as part of a plea deal. (Associated Press)

Nicaragua

• Humberto Ortega Saavedra, the former chief of Nicaragua’s armed forces, died yesterday. President Daniel Ortega’s younger brother was under house arrest after publicly questioning his brother’s “dictatorial” rule, the New York Times reports.

• Local media had reported in May that police had surrounded Humberto Ortega’s home, the same day Infobae published a lengthy interview in which Humberto Ortega discussed his sometimes tense relationship with his brother, the Associated Press reported.

Colombia

• Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s ‘Total Peace’ policy has suffered a series of setbacks, pushing the government instead toward partial agreements aimed at reducing violence and returning state rule to areas under the control of armed groups. “For some seasoned Latin American observers, this shift will be a disappointment. But harsh realities forced Petro’s hand, and incrementalism may actually have a better chance of successfully curbing violence in Colombia,” writes Elizabeth Dickinson in Foreign Affairs.

• “Colombian police intelligence likely purchased Israeli software Pegasus during the country’s 2021 national strike, during which police killed more than 60 protesters.

  The sale was never announced in Colombia,” Pirate Wire Services said.

Regional relations

• Renewed migration from Venezuela “will boost the issue in domestic politics throughout the hemisphere. The region’s leaders can still limit the damage,” argues Theodore Kahn in Americas Quarterly.

• Brazilian and Mexican authorities said yesterday they see the need to review and expand their current trade agreements, in a bid to strengthen ties between Latin America’s two largest economies, Reuters reports.

• Argentine President Javier Milei received his Salvadoran counterpart, Nayib Bukele, at the Pink House yesterday. They met behind closed doors and there was no press conference, El País reports.

• The two governments have pledged to cooperate on security issues. In June, their security ministers signed an agreement to cooperate “in the exchange of information and legal instruments and the joint training of security forces,” the Buenos Aires Times reported.

• Argentine Vice President Victoria Villarruel broke ranks and denounced an agreement announced last week between Britain and Argentina’s Falkland Islands. The pact, announced on the sidelines of the UNGA, includes resuming flights to the islands, resuming negotiations on a humanitarian project plan and organizing a trip for relatives of fallen Falklands War soldiers to visit their graves. ‘Are they kidding us? They receive material, concrete and immediate benefits, while offering us crumbs as emotional comfort and weakening our ability to negotiate,” Villarruel said. (Guardian)

Argentina

• A mass mobilization tomorrow in Argentina aims to support a recent law guaranteeing funding for universities, which Milei has vowed to veto. It will be the second public demonstration against attempts to cut funding for public universities, Página 12 reports.

Cuba

• The Cuban government says its economic policies to help growth amid the crisis are making progress, but too slowly as millions of Cubans remain without water, electricity or both, Reuters reports.

Regional

• The Center for Strategic and International Studies analyzes the relationship between Chinese ports in the region and organized crime groups.

Venezuela

• “Tren de Guayana, one of Venezuela’s oldest illegal mining groups, has reportedly used its ties to the government of President Nicolás Maduro to oust other criminal groups and consolidate its power in Bolívar State,” InSight Crime reports.

Ecuador

• Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa’s approval rating is hovering around 50% in the polls. He is more popular than the candidates challenging his re-election bid. But he faces significant challenges, including drought, fires, power outages, debt and security threats, which the Latin America Risk Report says will hurt his election chances in February.

• Noboa has pledged to build more high-security facilities in remote areas. But local communities fear for the land of their ancestors – and for their own safety, the Guardian reports.

Histories

• Yesterday, a ceremony in the Buenos Aires parliament commemorated the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert, who had been granted political asylum in Argentina after Pinochet’s 1973 coup. The killing is considered one of the first of the Plan Condor. (Page 12)