Latin America

SÃO PAULO (AP) — The capital of tropical Maranhão state ground largely to a halt Tuesday, becoming the first major Brazilian city to enter a lockdown in the hopes of preventing the coronavirus pandemic from overwhelming the health care system of one of the country’s poorest states.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the United States had nothing to do with an alleged incursion into Venezuela that landed two U.S. citizens behind bars in the crisis-stricken South American nation.

SÃO PAULO (AP) — Brazilian footballers are calling on health authorities to give them better assurances before they agree to start playing again amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Coronavirus has changed economic relations in rural Colombia, pushing campesinos to question extractive economies and offering an alternative model of production.

President Iván Duque signed a $844,000 public relations contract using money from the president’s Peace Fund, according to a report by Semana News.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro says he twice tested negative for the coronavirus but many, including a federal judge, are demanding he share the actual results. Still, the leader has refused.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said authorities arrested two U.S. citizens among a group of “mercenaries” on Monday, a day after a beach raid purportedly aimed at capturing the socialist leader that authorities say they foiled.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemala said Monday it will receive three flights this week carrying a total of 175 deported migrants after the United States agreed to test all those being deported for coronavirus.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico’s government said Monday it has asked a federal control board to delay austerity measures for at least two years and warned it doesn’t have enough money to pay bondholders as it struggles with the costs of recent earthquakes, the COVID-19 crisis and the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Maquiladoras in Baja California will reopen today, after the state government decided to reclassify manufacturers as “essential.”

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Migrants returning from the United States were once considered heroes in Guatemala, where the money they send back to their hometowns is a mainstay of the economy.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A former Green Beret has taken responsibility for what he claimed was a failed attack Sunday aimed at overthrowing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and that the socialist government said ended with eight dead.

MIAMI (AP) — The plan was simple, but perilous. Some 300 heavily armed volunteers would sneak into Venezuela from the northern tip of South America. Along the way, they would raid military bases in the socialist country and ignite a popular rebellion that would end in President Nicolás Maduro’s arrest.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Rioting inmates at a prison in the northern state of Amazonas held seven guards hostage for several hours Saturday, protesting against the suspension of all visits in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, authorities said.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A 5.4-magnitude earthquake hit near southern Puerto Rico on Saturday, briefly knocking out power and jolting many from their beds on an island where some people still remain in shelters from previous quakes earlier this year. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — In Brazil’s bustling Amazon city of Manaus, so many people have died within days in the coronavirus pandemic that coffins had to be stacked on top of each other in long, hastily dug trenches in a city cemetery. Some despairing relatives reluctantly chose cremation for loved ones to avoid burying them in those common graves.

The arrival of COVID-19 coincides with the perfect scenario of the miserable conditions of Honduras, that the illegally elected dictator Juan Orlando Hernández and his entourage of corrupt supporters.

El COVID-19 es el escenario perfecto para que en la miserable condición hondureña, el dictador elegido ilegalmente Juan Orlando Hernández y su sequito de corruptos.

These are the latest in a series of drug charges against Honduran officials, several of whom have plead guilty and have been sentenced to prison.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — A planeload of 89 Guatemalan deportees that arrived Thursday all tested negative for the coronavirus before boarding their flight from Texas, Guatemalan officials said Thursday.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Trump administration on Thursday suspended immigration court hearings for asylum-seekers waiting in Mexico through June 1, bowing to public health concerns while extending a state of limbo those locked down in Mexican migrant shelters.