This week’s likely top stories: Brazilian prosecutor plans to indict at least 11 in the Petrobras scandal; Haitian protestors in Port-au-Prince demand long-overdue elections; Latin American currencies drop as U.S. job growth surges in November; U.S. releases six Guantánamo prisoners to Uruguay; Meixcan government identifies the remains of one of 43 missing students.
Brazilian Prosecutor to Indict 11 in Petrobras Scandal: On Saturday night, Brazilian Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot announced his plans to indict at least 11 construction company executives arrested in mid-November on charges of bribery and money laundering in connection with the Petrobras graft scandal. “We are following the money and we will reach all of these perpetrators,” Janot said. The historic scandal has rocked the nation since former Petrobras executive Paulo Roberto Costa exposed the wrongdoing in a plea bargain after his arrest in March. An opinion survey released on Sunday by Datafolha showed that 68 percent of Brazilians hold President Dilma Rousseff, the former energy minister and Petrobras board chairwoman, responsible to some degree for the bribery scandal. In a country plagued by political corruption and impunity, Janot will be arguing at the helm of a landmark case that has the potential to inject much-needed accountability into Brazilian governance.
Haitians Turn Out in Strong Numbers to Demand Elections: On Friday, thousands of anti-government protesters took to the streets in Port-au-Prince to demand that President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe resign from office. Haitians are enraged by President Martelly’s continuous postponement of midterm and senatorial and municipal elections since 2011—a stalemate allegedly caused by political differences between the ruling party and a group of opposition senators. Protestors called for the long-overdue elections to be held without delay as they clashed with police in Haiti’s capital. The last major demonstration took place in late October, when the National Assembly failed to pass an electoral law in time for the scheduled election date.
Latin American Currencies Remain Weak after November U.S. Job Surge: The United States’ surprisingly robust addition of 321,000 jobs in November has set the U.S. economy on its fastest pace of job creation since the Clinton administration. However, this positive job growth in the U.S. has had a decidedly negative impact on Latin American currencies, since the Federal Reserve is likely to respond to November’s labor boost by raising interest rates sooner than expected. As a result of this possibility, the Mexican, Chilean, Argentine and Colombian pesos and Brazilian real stagnated at the week’s end, and are likely to remain weak against the U.S. dollar for the visible future. Analysts will not be able to fully assess the scale of short-term losses for Latin American economies until a scheduled release of a report on Friday that will evaluate the United States’ 2014 Producer Price Index for the 2014 fiscal year.
Guantánamo Prisoners Granted Refugee Status: Six prisoners—four Syrians, one Tunisian and one Palestinian—were released this weekend from the U.S. Guantánamo Bay detention center after 12 years, bringing the total number of detainees transferred from the prison in 2014 up to 16. The six arrived in Uruguay after President José Mujuica agreed to patriate the prisoners on humanitarian grounds in March, calling their detention for their alleged ties to Al Qaeda “an atrocious kidnapping.” There are currently 126 inmates eligible for transfer at the Cuban-based detention center who have not been released, due to instability in their home countries. The six detainees, now considered refugees in Uruguay, were never charged with a crime. Uruguay is the second Latin American country to receive former detainees from Guantánamo; El Salvador accepted two Chinese Muslim refugees in 2012.
DNA Links Charred Remains to One of Mexico’s Missing Students: Despite calls for caution from forensic experts, the Mexican government on Friday hailed the identification of the charred remains of Alexander Mora Venancio as confirmation that the 43 students abducted on September 26 after clashing with municipal police in Iguala were incinerated in a Cocula landfill by the Guerreros Unidos gang. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team insisted that the search for the missing students continue, stating that the evidence linking the site of the massacre with the site where the remains were found was largely based on witness testimony. The parents of the remaining missing students pledged to continue protesting until all of their sons have been found. Meanwhile, embattled Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto unveiled a plan to disband municipal police forces, putting them under federal control through constitutional reforms late last month.
