Latin America

COMITANCILLO, Guatemala (AP) — Thousands of residents of this Guatemalan town turned out Friday night amid tears and applause to receive the remains of 16 of their own, migrants killed near the Mexico-U.S. border in late January.

SÃO PAULO (AP) — A Supreme Court justice on Monday annulled all convictions against former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a ruling that potentially would allow him to run again for the presidency next year.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said Monday it is offering temporary legal residency to several hundred thousand Venezuelans who fled their country’s economic collapse and will review U.S. sanctions intended to isolate the South American nation.

On Friday, the health minister resigned over the issue, and protests against the lack of medicine and mismanagement turned into riots in Asunción.

“We demand a national security strategy focused on gender to put an end to femicides,” the letter said.

MIAMI (AP) — Three Venezuelan men pleaded guilty to helping organize an ill-conceived invasion last year to remove President Nicolás Maduro.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Months of protests over the nomination of a man accused of rape, including open dissent within the Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s party, haven’t derailed the selection of his preferred candidate to be governor of the Pacific coast state of Guerrero.

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — More than 20 million people were pushed into poverty during pandemic-plagued 2020 across Latin America and the Caribbean, the U.N. economic agency for the region reported Thursday.

SÃO PAULO (AP) — São Paulo and Buenos Aires were a tale of two cities this week, with Brazil’s megalopolis partially shutting down and bracing for possibly the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, while residents of Argentina’s capital were stepping out to movie theaters and restaurants.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemala’s Congress began reshaping the country’s highest court Tuesday, selecting a new magistrate and an alternate in decisions that could have grave consequences for the battle against corruption and impunity.

A dozen state police officers have been charged in the killings in the township of Camargo.

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori is on trial for his role in a 1990s government program in which many Indigenous women in poor communities say they were forcibly sterilized, and some died or suffered serious injuries because of infection.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden met virtually Monday with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a chance for the pair to talk more fully about migration, confronting the coronavirus and cooperating on economic and national security issues.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — Colombia on Monday became the first country in the Americas to receive a shipment of coronavirus vaccines from the United Nations-backed COVAX initiative, a program meant to ensure that the world’s most vulnerable people are inoculated but that has so far struggled to assist nations around the globe.

This election was the first test for the Nuevas Ideas party, which was founded by Bukele in 2018 but didn’t obtain official status in time for the election of that year.

Even though Nayib Bukele is not a candidate, he is at the center of candidates’ campaigns either to support him or provide a check on his power.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The conflict over highway blockades by members of the Yaqui group in northern Mexico has come to a head with the death of an Indigenous man killed by a trucker at a roadblock.

For the first time in 15 years, China’s two biggest policy banks —the China Development Bank (CDB) and the Export-Import Bank of China— made no new loans to the region in 2020, capping a multi-year slump driven by Latin America’s worsening economic slide.

After weeks of uncertainty, the first-round Ecuadorian election results are in: Andrés Arauz will face Guillermo Lasso in the second round of Ecuador’s presidential election on April 11.

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Public indignation over secret coronavirus vaccinations for the wealthy and well-connected in Peru grew Wednesday, a day after the Vatican’s ambassador to the South American nation admitted he was inoculated ahead of health care workers and the poor.

To date, Chile has ordered close to 90 million vaccine doses—enough to fully vaccinate its population of 19.2 million people twice.