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Tag: Latin America

  • Chile fires that have destroyed 1,000 homes and caused an oil refinery shut-down were intentionally lit, says Valparaíso governor 

    Chile fires that have destroyed 1,000 homes and caused an oil refinery shut-down were intentionally lit, says Valparaíso governor 

    Authorities in Chile’s Valparaiso region extended stay-at-home orders as forest fires continue to rage after killing at least 56 people in the country’s deadliest disaster since a massive earthquake in 2010.

    Blazes that began on Friday spread through bushland and into populated areas on the edge of the coastal city of Viña del Mar, about 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Santiago, fed by blustering wind and high temperatures.

    Power and water services have been disrupted, causing Chile’s second largest oil refinery to halt operations. As firefighters continued to battle the blazes, authorities said the fires may have been intentionally lit.

    “It’s evident that there was intentionality” when four separate fires start simultaneously in the same forest, Valparaíso Governor Rodrigo Mundaca told reporters on Sunday.

    President Gabriel Boric declared a state of emergency in the Valparaiso region late Friday. In a televised address on Saturday, he said that the death toll could still rise. Boric is traveling there again on Sunday.

    The government estimates that between 3,000 and 6,000 hectares (7,413-14,826 acres) and 1,000 homes have been razed so far, with at least 1,600 people occupying shelters as authorities and NGOs start relief efforts. More than 300 people are still unaccounted for, according to officials.

    Enap, Chile’s state-owned energy company, halted operations at its second-biggest oil refinery after wildfires caused power cuts. The Aconcagua plant on the country’s central coast was placed in a what’s known as a safe position to begin gradually restarting operations, a company official said in text messages late Saturday.

    The transport of copper from the large Los Bronces mine in central Chile has been unaffected by the fires, according to operator Anglo American Plc. Codelco didn’t immediately provide comment when asked about any logistical impact on its nearby Andina mine.

    — With assistance from Matthew Malinowski

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    James Attwood, Andrea Jaramillo, Bloomberg

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  • Photos: Argentine police battle protesters opposed to sweeping reform bill

    Photos: Argentine police battle protesters opposed to sweeping reform bill


    Police in Argentina have fired rubber bullets to disperse protesters gathered outside Congress in Buenos Aires as lawmakers debated newly elected President Javier Milei’s sweeping economic, social and political reform package.

    Opposition legislators stormed out of the building at one point to observe and denounce the police action, but later went back inside to take their seats and the debate resumed until past midnight.

    Local media reported three people injured and several arrests. The Buenos Aires press union reported at least a dozen journalists were hit by rubber bullets, including one in the face.

    It all unfolded on the second day of what is expected to be a marathon debate on Milei’s so-called omnibus reform bill.

    The 53-year-old political outsider – a libertarian and self-described anarcho-capitalist – won a resounding election victory last October on a wave of fury over decades of economic crises marked by debt, rampant money printing, inflation and fiscal deficit.

    Milei began his term by devaluing the peso by more than 50 percent, cutting state subsidies for fuel and transport, reducing the number of ministries by half, and scrapping hundreds of rules so as to deregulate the economy.

    His substantial reform package touches on all areas of public and private life, from privatisations to cultural issues, the penal code, divorce and the status of football clubs.

    But many Argentinians are already up in arms and staged a strike less than two months into his term.

    “Milei promises his austerity measures and reforms will bring down soaring inflation in Argentina and jumpstart the economy,” Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo, reporting from Thursday’s protest, sad.

    She noted, however, that the unrest showed “how difficult the months ahead will be and how the president is willing to confront those who dare oppose him”.



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  • Argentines protest against new austerity measures

    Argentines protest against new austerity measures

    The president has said that the austerity measures are due to years of overspending that have resulted in huge debts.

    Argentine unions have begun a 12-hour strike in the capital to protest against tough economic reforms by President Javier Milei.

    Wednesday’s demonstration is the most significant show of opposition to Milei’s spending cuts and privatisation plans since he took office last month and pledged to fix an economy dealing with 211 percent inflation.

    The strike, coordinated by the umbrella union, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), comes amid scrutiny of Milei’s two significant reforms: the “omnibus” bill going through Congress and a “mega-decree” deregulating the economy.

    “Milei wants a country where poverty and informal work reaches 90 percent,” union member and national opposition deputy Hugo Yasky said on local radio station Radio Con Vos.

    “Now there is no job creation. What there is now is widespread misery, people’s desperation, there are no measures to mitigate the damage they are causing.”

    Demonstrators hold a placard that reads ‘down with the decree’ as they protest near the Pueyrredon Bridge during a one-day national strike, in Buenos Aires, Argentina [Agustin Marcarian/Reuters]

    Earlier on Wednesday, the omnibus bill was approved by a committee in the lower congressional house, the Chamber of Deputies.

    The mass strikes began at 12pm (15:00 GMT) and affected transportation, banks, hospitals, and public services.

    Local airlines said they had been forced to cancel hundreds of fights due to the demonstration.

    Protesters held placards that read “The homeland is not for sale” and “Eating is not a privilege” as some others held a giant puppet of Milei.

    Another poster said, “Today’s retirees are yesterday’s workers, stop robbing them!”

    Al Jazeera’s Lucia Newman, reporting from Buenos Aires, said it was “impossible” to determine the number of people attending the protest due to its scale.

    “There seems to be a kind of unofficial agreement with the strikers and the security minister to allow these huge numbers of people to be here but only if they cannot disrupt traffic,” Newman said.

    “It’s still very, very tense, and it’s an ongoing situation here, but it’s a huge turnout so far.”

    Milei’s government said that the austerity measures are due to years of overspending that have left the South American country with huge debts to local and international creditors, including a $44bn deal with the International Monetary Fund.

    “There is no strike that stops us, there is no threat that intimidates us,” Milei’s security minister and former presidential election rival Patricia Bullrich wrote on X.

    “It’s mafia unionists, poverty managers, complicit judges and corrupt politicians, all defending their privileges, resisting the change that society chose democratically.”

    Milei, an economist and former TV pundit, assumed the presidency after a shock win in last year’s general election.

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  • Prosecutors in Peru seek 34-year sentence for ex-President Castillo

    Prosecutors in Peru seek 34-year sentence for ex-President Castillo

    Former President Pedro Castillo is accused of ‘carrying out a coup’ after he attempted to dissolve Congress in 2022.

    Peru’s prosecutor’s office has formally requested 34 years in prison for former President Pedro Castillo, who was dramatically removed from office and arrested after his attempt to dissolve Congress in late 2022.

    Castillo, whose removal sparked off months of deadly protests that hit the key mining sector in the copper-rich country, remains in pre-trial detention.

    On Friday, the public prosecution office wrote on social media that it sought the jail term for “crimes of rebellion, abuse of authority and serious disturbance of public peace”.

    In the request presented to the court, Castillo is accused of “carrying out a coup d’etat”.

    Castillo, a former teacher from rural Peru, elected in 2012, was the first leader of the Andean nation with no ties to the elites and was hailed as the country’s first poor president.

    Once he took up the position, the leftist leader was locked in a power struggle with the opposition-led Congress and was accused by the attorney general of leading a criminal organisation involving his family and allies that handed out public contracts for money.

    Before his removal in December 2022, Castillo said the plan to “temporarily” dissolve Congress was to “reestablish the rule of law and democracy” in the country.

    However, opposition politicians said the decision went against Peru’s constitution, and Congress voted overwhelmingly to remove him from the country’s top position.

    Castillo has argued that he was the victim of a political conspiracy between the right-wing opposition and the attorney general.

    “I never took up arms,” he has told court hearings since his arrest.

    Castillo was replaced by his vice president, Dina Boluarte, who faced protests as some called for her to step down and hold an early election.

    A crackdown by security forces killed about 50 people, according to an estimate by Human Rights Watch, which accused Peruvian authorities of extrajudicial and arbitrary killings.

    While Boluarte is facing a probe over the deaths of the protesters, she maintains immunity until her term ends in 2026.

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  • Conta Simples grabs another $41.5M for its expense management approach in Brazil | TechCrunch

    Conta Simples grabs another $41.5M for its expense management approach in Brazil | TechCrunch

    Conta Simples, an expense management and corporate card company in Brazil, raised a Series B round of $41.5 million, or more than R$200 million.

    Base10 Partners led the round and was joined by Conta’s Series A investors, including Valor Capital, Jam Fund, Y Combinator, Big Bets, Broadhaven and DOMO. As part of the investment, Base10 managing partner TJ Nahigian joined Conta’s board.

    The new funding comes as company executives Rodrigo Tognini, CEO, and Taeli Klaumann, CFO, tell TechCrunch that 2023 was the “best year” for Conta Simples. It ended the year reaching breakeven and obtained a license from the Brazilian Central Bank to operate as a Direct Credit Society. This means the financial services company can do more with credit, digital accounts and payments.

    To date, Conta Simples has 30,000 active users and has issued 500,000 physical and digital corporate credit cards for a total payment volume of R$18 billion, or roughly $3 trillion, Tognini said.

    “Over the past year, we grew in terms of revenue, almost 3x year over year,” Tognini added. “We also went from a negative margin to breakeven, and I think was one of the main reasons that our current investors were interested in doing this Series B round.”

    Meanwhile, its expense control technology provides a streamlined process and customized monitoring. In 2022, the company acquired online ads startup Hackr Ads following a R$121 million Series A ($24.8 million in today’s dollars). This gave Hackr Ads’ customers the ability to use Conta and for Conta to provide its customers with a way to manage advertising campaigns.

    The company expects to use the new funding in a few ways. The first is to grow its team. Tognini expects to open and fill about 100 new roles in 2024. Another is moving upstream to handle bigger customers. Much of Conta’s initial clients are small businesses. That won’t change; however, the company is now in a position to increase and develop more features and products and sell to mid-level and small enterprises, Klaumann said.

    “Some big companies, not only in Brazil, but all countries, are not well served with expense management, so there is a huge potential there,” Klaumann said. “The idea is to use this money in the next three, four or five years. We understand that the central bank in Brazil is trying to create these disruptive ideas. Our plan is to stay close to them and create not only buy now, pay later and other products to guarantee that we’re going to support all sizes of businesses.”

    Christine Hall

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  • Dilma Rousseff Fast Facts | CNN

    Dilma Rousseff Fast Facts | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

    Birth date: December 14, 1947

    Birth place: Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

    Birth name: Dilma Vana Rousseff

    Father: Pedro Rousseff, construction entrepreneur

    Mother: Dilma Jane (da Silva) Rousseff, teacher

    Marriages: Carlos Araujo (1973-2000, divorced); Claudio Galeno Linhares (1968-early 1970s, divorced)

    Children: with Carlos Araujo: Paula, 1976

    Education: Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, B.A. Economics, 1977

    Prior to running for president, she had never run for an elected office.

    Joined the resistance movement against the military dictatorship and was jailed and allegedly tortured in the early 1970s.

    Rousseff democratized Brazil’s electricity sector through the “Luz Para Todos” (Light for All) program, which made electricity widely available, even in rural areas.

    1986 – Finance secretary for the city of Porto Alegre.

    2003 – Is named minister of mines and energy by President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva.

    2003-2010 – Serves as chair of Petrobras, Brazil’s state-run oil company.

    June 2005-March 2010 – Lula da Silva’s chief of staff.

    April 2009 – Is diagnosed with stage one lymphoma and begins treatment. By September, she is declared cancer free.

    October 31, 2010 – Wins a run-off election to become Brazil’s first female president.

    September 21, 2011 – Becomes the first female leader to kick off the annual United Nations General Assembly debates.

    2011 – Allegations of corruption are the basis of her dismissal of six cabinet ministers in her first year in office. Between June and December, her chief of staff, ministers of tourism, agriculture, transportation, sports and labor along with 20 transportation employees resign as a result of the scandal.

    September 17, 2013 – The United States and Brazil jointly agree to postpone Rousseff’s state visit to Washington next month due to controversy over reports the US government was spying on her communications.

    September 24, 2013 – In a speech before the UN General Assembly, Rousseff speaks about allegations that the US National Security Agency spied on her. “Tampering in such a manner in the lives and affairs of other countries is a breach of international law and, as such, it is an affront to the principles that should otherwise govern relations among countries, especially among friendly nations.”

    2014 – Executives at Petrobras are accused of illegally “diverting” billions from the company’s accounts for their personal use or to pay off officials. Rousseff served as chair of Petrobras during many of the years when the alleged corruption took place. She denies any knowledge of the corruption.

    October 26, 2014 – Is reelected president.

    December 2, 2015 – A bid to impeach Rousseff is launched by the speaker of the country’s lower house of Congress, Eduardo Cunha. Rousseff has been accused of hiding a budgetary deficit to win reelection in 2014, and opponents blame her for the worst recession in decades.

    April 17, 2016 – A total of 367 lawmakers in the Brazilian parliament’s lower house vote to impeach Rousseff, comfortably more than the two-thirds majority required by law. The impeachment motion will next go to the country’s Senate.

    May 12, 2016 – The Brazilian Senate votes 55-22 to begin an impeachment trial against Rousseff. Rousseff will step down for 180 days and Vice President Michel Temer will serve as interim president while the trial takes place.

    August 4, 2016 – After a final report concludes that reasons exist to proceed with formally removing Rousseff, the Brazilian Senate impeachment commission votes in favor of trying the suspended president in front of the full senate chamber.

    August 25, 2016 – Rousseff’s impeachment trial begins.

    August 31, 2016 – Brazil’s Senate votes 61-20 in favor of removing Rousseff from office.

    September 5, 2017 – Corruption charges are filed against Rousseff, her predecessor Lula da Silva, and six Workers’ Party members. They are accused of running a criminal organization, to divert funds from state-owned oil firm Petrobras. The charges are related to Operation Car Wash, a lengthy money laundering investigation conducted by the Brazilian government. Lula da Silva, Rousseff, and the Workers’ party deny the allegations.

    October 7, 2018 – Rousseff only receives 15% of the vote for senator in the general election.

    March 24, 2023 – The New Development Bank announces its board of governors elected Rousseff as its new president.

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  • 7 countries, 7 traditional Christmas feasts | CNN

    7 countries, 7 traditional Christmas feasts | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Christmas is celebrated in many ways in many corners of the globe, and the cuisine that marks the holiday is as diverse as the people feasting on it.

    Christmas and Advent food traditions are comforting at a time when many people have had a challenging year. And Christmas dishes are particularly special in many households.

    The typical Christmas meal may be different by destination, but the idea of indulging in a feast, be it on the day itself or the night before, isn’t.

    Here’s a look at how locals celebrate Christmas through cuisine in seven countries. We asked hospitality experts about these traditions, and they shared their perspective on what’s typical for them as well as their families and friends.

    The French enjoy their lavish holiday meal on December 24, says Francois Payard, the renowned pastry chef who grew up in Nice.

    Locals sit down for dinner around 8 p.m., he says, and savor a first course of seafood. That usually means a lobster thermidor – a baked dish of the cooked crustacean mixed with mustard, egg yolks and brandy – or a shrimp scampi.

    Then it’s on to a large capon – a male chicken that’s renowned for its tenderness – and a medley of sides including mashed potatoes and chestnuts sauteed with butter and topped with sage. “Chestnuts are a fixture in any Christmas meal for us,” says Payard.

    Dessert, the grand finale, is a yule log, or bûche de Noël – the French version of a Christmas cake. Often two are served – one chocolate, the other chestnut. To drink, it’s the finest wine you can get your hands on, usually red from Burgundy that’s not too full-bodied for the capon.

    On Christmas Day, the French savor a hearty brunch that may include creamy scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and toast. The meal finishes with assorted cheeses such as Brie, Gruyere and Munster, Payard says.

    Tortellini in brodo is part of many an Italian Christmas Eve spread.

    Similar to France, Italians celebrate Christmas with their biggest spread on the eve of the big day. Luca Finardi, the general manager of the Mandarin Oriental Milan, says that locals usually attend midnight Mass and enjoy a sumptuous meal before heading to church.

    Smoked salmon with buttered crostini or a smoked salted cod is the precursor to the main meal. Italians from coastal areas such as the Amalfi Coast may start with a crudo such as sea bass with herbs and sea salt, says Finardi.

    Next up is tortellini in brodo – stuffed pasta bathed in a hot broth of chicken and Parmesan cheese – the latter of which must come from the namesake region in Italy.

    For the main meal, northern Italians tend to have stuffed turkey while those from seaside areas may tuck into a large baked sea bass surrounded by roasted potatoes and vegetables.

    “The must no matter where you’re from is panettone – a typical sweet bread,” says Finardi. “The secret is to warm it up for just a few minutes.” Spumante, a sparkling wine, is the drink of choice.

    As for the famous Italian Christmas meal of the feast of the seven fishes, Finardi says it’s limited mainly to the Campania region, which includes the Amalfi Coast and Naples.

    Christmas Day is more about connecting with family and less about food, Finardi says. “We eat leftovers and recover from the day before.”

    Christmas pudding, sometimes flaming with brandy, finishes the traditional English Christmas feast.

    England

    The Brits don’t typically indulge in their big holiday meal on Christmas Eve. “The 24th is for cooking with our families and going to the local pub for a pint,” says Nicola Butler, the owner of the London-based luxury travel company NoteWorthy.

    The real festivities start on Christmas morning with a glass of champagne and a breakfast of smoked salmon and mince pieces, she says. Later that day, after the Queen’s annual Christmas speech is aired, it’s time for dinner.

    That means a turkey or roast beef and a host of sides such as roasted parsnips and carrots, buttered peas and Brussels sprouts. Some families include Yorkshire pudding, a savory baked good of flour, eggs and milk made with meat drippings.

    Dessert is Christmas pudding, which is actually a dark and dense cake made with dried fruits, spices and usually a splash of brandy. “We have lots of wine to go along with the food,” says Butler.

    Christmas honey cookies are part of a typical Greek holiday spread.

    Maria Loi, the celebrity Greek chef, says that the country’s holiday celebrations begin on Christmas Eve around 7 p.m.

    “Families sit around the fireplace and eat a special wheat bread that we make only at Christmas,” she says. “Some households also eat pork sausages. It’s the only [occasion] Greeks eat pork because the meat is not common in our cuisine.”

    After attending an early morning holy communion on Christmas Day, Greeks go home for an all-day eating fest, says Loi.

    Homemade honey cookies with walnuts or almonds come first followed by chicken soup with orzo. A few hours later, it’s on to either a roast chicken stuffed with chestnuts or variations of grilled or braised pork dishes. Sides such as sauteed wild greens, finely shredded romaine with scallions and feta cheese and roasted lemon potatoes accompany the entrée.

    Dessert is light and could be baked apples with honey and walnuts or Greek yogurt topped with honey. To drink, Loi says Greeks favor red wine.

    Posole is a traditional way to start a Mexican Christmas meal.

    Mexicans get the Christmas festivities going on December 24, according to Pablo Carmona and Josh Kremer, co-founders of Paradero Hotels.

    “Families start by breaking a piñata that’s filled with all sorts of locally made candies in chili and tamarind flavors,” says Kremer. Dinner follows usually somewhere between 7 and 10 p.m.

    The meal starts with posole – a stew with big corn kernels and pork or beef that’s accompanied by as many as 20 condiments such as parsley, cilantro, chiles and assorted cheeses.

    In a nod to the American influence in Mexico, the entrée – at least for Carmona and Kremer – is a turkey with all the trimmings such as mashed potatoes and green beans.

    The sweet finish is often a creamy flan plus strawberries and cream. But the meal isn’t complete without tequilas and mezcals to go along with the food.

    On the 25th, many Mexicans heat up the leftovers from the night before. “We’re tired so we don’t want to bother to cook,” says Carmona.

    Homemade tamales are a staple in Costa Rica.

    Many Costa Ricans celebrate Christmas with a middle-of-the-night extravaganza, says Leo Ghitis, owner of Nayara Hotels, in the country’s northern highlands. “We go to midnight Mass and come home and have a huge meal at 2 a.m.,” he says.

    Homemade tamales, filled with either chicken or pork or vegetables and cheese, kick off the spread. Then it’s on to arroz con pollo, Costa Rica’s national rice dish that’s made with green beans, peas, carrots, saffron, cilantro and a chopped up whole chicken.

    The third course is an assortment of grilled proteins. Costa Ricans who live along the coast have seafood such as marlin, tuna, mahi mahi, shrimp and lobster while inlanders tuck into beef, pork and chicken. Sides are the same for both: rice with black beans, boiled palm fruit with sour cream and a hearts of palm salad with avocado.

    Dessert is typically a coconut flan and arroz con leche – rice with milk, sugar and cinnamon.

    “We top off the meal with lots of rum punch and eggnog and don’t finish until 4 or 5 a.m.,” says Ghitis.

    Christmas Day itself is about finishing leftovers and hitting the streets for outdoor parties, he says.

    Peas and rice grace many holiday plates in the Bahamas.

    Christmas Day is the big food celebration for Bahamians, says Vonya Ifill, the director of talent and culture at Rosewood Baha Mar.

    Locals have a big dinner that includes turkey, ham, macaroni and cheese, peas and rice made with coconut milk and potato salad.

    “We have this feast in the evening and then at midnight go off and celebrate Boxing Day with a Junkanoo Festival,” she says. “After dancing and parading around all evening and into the early morning hours, we end the festivities with a boiled fish or fish stew.”

    The seafood, she says, is always accompanied by potato bread or Johnny Cake, a cornmeal flatbread.

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  • Betting and iGaming Await Final Approval in Brazil

    Betting and iGaming Await Final Approval in Brazil

    Sports betting and online gambling may become a reality for Brazil as early as 2024 after an important decision taken by the country’s Chamber of Deputies. In a final voting session on Thursday, the Deputies voted to approve Bill 3,626/2023, a proposal that called for the regulation of sports betting, as announced by Agência Câmara de Notícias. Earlier this month, the same proposal was reviewed by the Senate. While Senate members approved the sports betting part of the bill, they voted against the included text related to online gambling activities. This pushed the bill once again into the hands of the Chamber of Deputies.

    Regardless of the Senate’s decision, the latest vote reinstated the bill’s text that involved iGaming. This in other words helped overturn the decision made by the Senate, at least for the moment. Unlike the Senate vote, where a majority of the members were against online gambling, a majority of 261 of the Deputies voted in favor of online gambling. In contrast, the votes against iGaming on Thursday were only 120.

    Thanks to the latest decision, Bill 3,626/2023 has gained further traction and now awaits final approval. The proposal that calls for the regulation of sports betting and online gambling activities now heads to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. If the president signs off on the proposal, this would mark its final step before becoming law, effectively paving the way for legal iGaming and sports betting activities across Brazil.

    Proposed Bill Sets Tax Rate, License Fees for Betting and iGaming Operators

    Initially, the proposed bill offered an 18% tax on the revenues for betting and iGaming operators. However, undergoing significant changes, the latest proposal features a 12% tax on gambling revenue. On the other hand, bettors are also subject to a tax rate which is 15% on their winnings.

    Similar to other betting and online gambling markets, operators in Brazil will be subject to a license fee. The license fee was set at BRL 30 million ($6.1 million), permitting operators to operate up to three brands for five years. When it comes to regulation of the gambling activities, the bill designated the country’s Ministry of Finance.

    The traction gained by the gambling legislation comes at a time when earlier this week, the Chamber of Deputies voted in favor of a proposal that prohibited the promotion of unregulated gambling websites by social media influencers. That proposal, seeking to reduce the share of the black market, effectively prohibited influencers from promoting unregulated gambling activities through stories, videos or any form of online communication.

    Jerome García

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  • Puerto Rico Fast Facts | CNN

    Puerto Rico Fast Facts | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, a self-governing US territory located in the Caribbean.

    (from the CIA World Factbook)

    Area: 9,104 sq km

    Population: 3,057,311 (2023 est.)

    Capital: San Juan

    The people of Puerto Rico are US citizens. They vote in US presidential primaries, but not in presidential elections.

    First named San Juan Bautista by Christopher Columbus.

    The governor is elected by popular vote with no term limits.

    Jenniffer González has been the resident commissioner since January 3, 2017. The commissioner serves in the US House of Representatives, but has no vote, except in committees. Gonzalez is the first woman to hold this position.

    It is made up of 78 municipalities.

    Over 40% of the population lives in poverty, according to the Census Bureau.

    Puerto Ricans have voted in six referendums on the issue of statehood, in 1967, 1993, 1998, 2012, 2017 and 2020. The 2012 referendum was the first time the popular vote swung in statehood’s favor. Since these votes were nonbinding, no action had to be taken, and none was. Ultimately, however, Congress must pass a law admitting them to the union.

    In addition to becoming a state, options for Puerto Rico’s future status include remaining a commonwealth, entering “free association” or becoming an independent nation. “Free association” is an official affiliation with the United States where Puerto Rico would still receive military assistance and funding.

    1493-1898 – Puerto Rico is a Spanish colony.

    July 25, 1898 – During the Spanish-American War, the United States invades Puerto Rico.

    December 10, 1898 – With the signing of the Treaty of Paris, Spain cedes Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States. The island is named “Porto Rico” in the treaty.

    April 12, 1900 – President William McKinley signs the Foraker Act into law. It designates the island an “unorganized territory,” and allows for one delegate from Puerto Rico to the US House of Representatives with no voting power.

    March 2, 1917 – President Woodrow Wilson signs the Jones Act into law, granting the people of Puerto Rico US citizenship.

    May 1932 – Legislation changes the name of the island back to Puerto Rico.

    November 1948 – The first popularly elected governor, Luis Muñoz Marín, is voted into office.

    July 3, 1950 – President Harry S. Truman signs Public Law 600, giving Puerto Ricans the right to draft their own constitution.

    October 1950 – In protest of Public Law 600, Puerto Rican nationalists lead armed uprisings in several Puerto Rican towns.

    November 1, 1950 – Puerto Rican nationalists Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola attempt to shoot their way into Blair House, where President Truman is living while the White House is being renovated. Torresola is killed by police; Collazo is arrested and sent to prison.

    June 4, 1951 – In a plebiscite vote, more than three-quarters of Puerto Rican voters approve Public Law 600.

    February 1952 – Delegates elected to a constitutional convention approve a draft of the constitution.

    March 3, 1952 – Puerto Ricans vote in favor of the constitution.

    July 25, 1952 – Puerto Rico becomes a self-governing commonwealth as the constitution is put in place. This is also the anniversary of the United States invasion of Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War.

    March 1, 1954 – Five members of the House of Representatives are shot on the House floor; Alvin Bentley, (R-MI), Ben Jensen (R-IA), Clifford Davis (D-TN), George Fallon (D-MD) and Kenneth Roberts (D-AL). Four Puerto Rican nationalists, Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero and Irving Flores Rodriguez, are arrested and sent to prison. President Jimmy Carter grants Cordero clemency in 1977 and commutes all four of their sentences in 1979.

    July 23, 1967 – Commonwealth status is upheld via a status plebiscite.

    1970 – The resident commissioner gains the right to vote in committee via an amendment to the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970.

    September 18, 1989 – Hurricane Hugo hits the island as a Category 4 hurricane causing more than $1 billion in property damages.

    November 14, 1993 – Commonwealth status is upheld via a plebiscite.

    September 21, 1998 – Hurricane Georges hits the island causing an estimated $1.75 billion in damage.

    August 6, 2009 – Sonia Sotomayor, who is of Puerto Rican descent, is confirmed by the US Senate (68-31). She becomes the third woman and the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.

    November 6, 2012 – Puerto Ricans vote for statehood via a status plebiscite. The results are deemed inconclusive.

    August 3, 2015 – Puerto Rico defaults on its monthly debt for the first time in its history, paying only $628,000 toward a $58 million debt.

    December 31, 2015 – The first case of the Zika virus is reported on the island.

    January 4, 2016 – Puerto Rico defaults on its debt for the second time.

    May 2, 2016 – Puerto Rico defaults on a $422 million debt payment.

    June 30, 2016 – President Barack Obama signs the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), a bill that establishes a seven-member board to oversee the commonwealth’s finances. The following day Puerto Rico defaults on its debt payment.

    January 4, 2017 – The Puerto Rico Admission Act is introduced to Congress by Rep. Gonzalez.

    May 3, 2017 – Puerto Rico files for bankruptcy. It is the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history.

    June 5, 2017 – Puerto Rico declares its Zika epidemic is over. The Puerto Rico Department of Health has reported more than 40,000 confirmed cases of the Zika virus since the outbreak began in 2016.

    June 11, 2017 – Puerto Ricans vote for statehood via a status plebiscite. Over 97% of the votes are in favor of statehood, but only 23% of eligible voters participate.

    September 20, 2017 – Hurricane Maria makes landfall near Yabucoa in Puerto Rico as a Category 4 hurricane. It is the strongest storm to hit the island in 85 years. The energy grid is heavily damaged, with an island-wide power outage.

    September 22, 2017 – The National Weather Service recommends the evacuation of about 70,000 people living near the Guajataca River in northwest Puerto Rico because a dam is in danger of failing.

    October 3, 2017 – President Donald Trump visits. The trip comes after mounting frustration with the federal response to the storm. Many residents remain without power and continue to struggle to get access to food and fuel nearly two weeks after the storm hit.

    December 18, 2017 – Gov. Ricardo Rosselló orders a review of deaths related to Hurricane Maria as the number could be much higher than the officially reported number. The announcement from the island’s governor follows investigations from CNN and other news outlets that called into question the official death toll of 64.

    January 22, 2018 – Rosselló announces that the commonwealth will begin privatizing the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.

    January 30, 2018 – More than four months after Maria battered Puerto Rico, the Federal Emergency Management Agency tells CNN it is halting new shipments of food and water to the island. Distribution of its stockpiled 46 million liters of water and four million meals and snacks will continue. The agency believes that amount is sufficient until normalcy returns.

    February 11, 2018 – An explosion and fire at a power substation causes a blackout in parts of northern Puerto Rico, according to authorities.

    May 29, 2018 – According to an academic report published in the New England Journal of Medicine, an estimated 4,645 people died in Hurricane Maria and its aftermath in Puerto Rico. The article’s authors call Puerto Rico’s official death toll of 64 a “substantial underestimate.”

    August 8, 2018 – Puerto Rican officials say the death toll from Maria may be far higher than their official estimate of 64. In a report to Congress, the commonwealth’s government says documents show that 1,427 more deaths occurred in the four months after Hurricane Maria than “normal,” compared with deaths that occurred the previous four years. The 1,427 figure also appears in a report published July 9.

    August 28, 2018 – The Puerto Rican government raises its official death toll from Maria to 2,975 after a report on storm fatalities is published by researchers at George Washington University. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, a critic of the Trump administration, says local and federal government failed to provide needed aid. She says the botched recovery effort led to preventable deaths.

    August 29, 2018 – Trump says the federal government’s response to the disaster was “fantastic.” He says problems with the island’s aging infrastructure created challenges for rescue workers.

    September 4, 2018 – The US Government Accountability Office releases a report revealing that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was so overwhelmed with other storms by the time Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico that more than half of the workers it was deploying to disasters were known to be unqualified for the jobs they were doing in the field.

    September 13, 2018 – In a tweet, Trump denies that nearly 3,000 people died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. He expresses skepticism about the death toll, suggesting that individuals who died of other causes were included in the hurricane count.

    July 9, 2019 – Excerpts of profanity-laden, homophobic and misogynistic messages between Rosselló and members of his inner circle are published by local media.

    July 10, 2019 – Six people, including Puerto Rico’s former education secretary and a former health insurance official, are indicted on corruption charges. The conspiracy allegedly involved directing millions of dollars in government contracts to politically-connected contractors.

    July 11, 2019 – A series of protests begin in response to the leaked messages and the indictment, with calls for Rosselló to resign.

    July 13, 2019 – The Center for Investigative Journalism publishes hundreds of leaked messages from Rosselló and other officials. Rosselló and members of his inner circle ridicule numerous politicians, members of the media and celebrities.

    July 24, 2019 – Rosselló announces he will resign on August 2.

    August 7, 2019 – Puerto Rico’s Justice Secretary Wanda Vázquez Garced is sworn in as the third governor Puerto Rico has had in less than a week. Earlier in the day, the August 2nd swearing-in of Rosselló’s handpicked successor, attorney Pedro Pierluisi, is thrown out by the Supreme Court, on grounds he has not been confirmed by both chambers of the legislature.

    September 27, 2019 – The federal control board that oversees Puerto Rico’s finances releases a plan that would cut the island’s debt by more than 60% and rescue it from bankruptcy. The plan targets bonds and other debt held by the government and will now go before a federal judge. The percentage of Puerto Rico’s taxpayer funds spent on debt payments will fall to less than 9%, compared to almost 30% before the restructuring.

    December 28, 2019 – A sequence of earthquakes of magnitude 2.0 or higher begin hitting Puerto Rico, including a 6.4 magnitude quake on January 7 that killed at least one man, destroyed homes and left most of the island without power.

    February 4, 2020 – A magnitude 5 earthquake strikes Puerto Rico. It is the 11th earthquake of at least that size in the past 30 days, according to the US Geological Survey.

    November 3, 2020 – Puerto Ricans vote in favor of statehood, and Pierluisi is elected governor.

    January 2, 2021 – Pierluisi is sworn in.

    April 21, 2022 – The Supreme Court rules that Congress can exclude residents of Puerto Rico from some federal disability benefits available to those who live in the 50 states.

    August 4, 2022 – Vázquez is arrested in San Juan on bribery charges connected to the financing of her 2020 campaign.

    September 18, 2022 – Hurricane Fiona makes landfall along the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico, near Punta Tocon, with winds of 85 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. The hurricane causes catastrophic flooding, amid a complete power outage. Two people are killed.

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  • Argentina’s Milei starts shock therapy by devaluing peso by 50 percent

    Argentina’s Milei starts shock therapy by devaluing peso by 50 percent

    New president Milei warns of painful measures as currency value slashed, subsidies cut, public works tenders cancelled.

    Argentina’s government has announced it will slash the value of its currency, the peso, by more than 50 percent against the US dollar as its new far-right president seeks radical solutions to fix the country’s worst economic crisis in decades.

    President Javier Milei‘s economy chief announced the painful measure on Tuesday, saying it was necessary for Argentina to “avoid catastrophe”.

    The devaluation would drop the peso’s value from 400 to the dollar to more than 800 to the dollar, a blow to tens of millions of Argentinians already struggling to make ends meet.

    Economy Minister Luis Caputo announced a raft of other austerity measures, including sweeping subsidy cuts, the cancellation of tenders for public works projects, and plans to axe nine government ministries.

    However, the government plans to double social spending for the poorest to help them absorb the economic shock.

    “For a few months, we’re going to be worse than before,” Caputo said in his televised address.

    “If we continue as we are, we are inevitably heading toward hyperinflation,” he said.

    A sign outside a store reads, in Spanish, ‘We accept dollars’, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on December 12 [Tomas Cuesta/Reuters]

    ‘Tough pill to swallow’

    The planned measures drew praise from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to whom Argentina owes $45bn, but sparked harsh criticism from some progressive activists.

    Left-wing activist Juan Grabois said that Caputo had declared “a social murder without flinching like a psychopath about to massacre his defenceless victims”.

    “Your salary in the private sector, in the public sector, in the popular, social and solidarity economy, in the cooperative or informal sector, for retirees and pensioners, will get you half in the supermarket,” Grabois said. “Do you really think that people are not going to protest?”

    Jimena Blanco, chief analyst with risk consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft, said Milei’s government was trying to temper an otherwise guaranteed economic crash landing.

    “He promised a very tough pill to swallow and he’s delivering that pill,” she said. “The question is how long will popular patience last in terms of waiting for the economic situation to change.”

    Economic shock

    The economic overhaul is part of the new strategy by Milei, who was sworn in on Sunday and has aggressively sought to tackle the fiscal deficit he believes is the root of Argentina’s economic woes.

    A self-described “anarcho-capitalist”, Milei argues harsh austerity is needed to put Argentina back on the path to prosperity and that there is no time for a gradualist approach. However, he has promised any adjustments will almost entirely affect the state rather than the private sector.

    Argentinians, disillusioned with skyrocketing inflation and a 40 percent poverty rate, have proven surprisingly receptive to his vision.

    Still, Milei’s road map is likely to encounter fierce opposition from the left-leaning Peronist movement’s lawmakers and unions it controls, whose members have said they refuse to lose wages.

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  • Leaders of Venezuela and Guyana to meet amid border dispute

    Leaders of Venezuela and Guyana to meet amid border dispute

    The planned meeting comes after Venezuela threatened to annex the oil-rich territory of Esequibo currently in Guyana.

    Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro will meet Guyana President Mohamed Irfaan Ali amid a territorial dispute between the two countries, according to a letter from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves.

    Tensions have been mounting between Venezuela and Guyana in recent weeks due to a long-running border dispute over Esequibo, an area in Guyana where massive discoveries of offshore oil and gas have been made.

    The bilateral meeting is set to take place on December 14 in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines where they will be accompanied by Gonsalves.

    Venezuela’s government said the meeting “is in order to preserve our aspiration to maintain Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace”.

    The Office of the President of Guyana confirmed Ali had agreed to the meeting, but added, “Guyana’s land boundary is not up for discussion.”

    The regional blocs of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are mediating to bring the parties together.

    Earlier on Saturday, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has also been invited to Thursday’s meeting as an observer, spoke to Maduro and called for dialogue, saying it was important to avoid unilateral measures that could escalate the situation.

    Venezuela has for decades laid claim to Essequibo, claiming that the Essequibo River to the region’s east forms a natural border and has historically been recognised as such.

    The country’s latest efforts to overtake the territory were piqued in 2015 when ExxonMobil announced it had found oil in commercial quantities off the Essequibo coast.

    Last weekend, voters in Venezuela also rejected the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) jurisdiction over the area, backing the creation of a new state.

    Maduro also proposed a government meeting that a bill be sent to the National Assembly for the creation of a “Guyana Esequiba” province.

    However, Guyana, of which Essequibo makes up more than two-thirds and hosts 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens, has administered the territory since the frontiers were determined by an arbitration panel in 1899.

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  • Brazil Seeks to Stop Illegal Gambling Promotion by Influencers

    Brazil Seeks to Stop Illegal Gambling Promotion by Influencers

    Brazil continues to move forward with its sports betting legislation despite still experiencing setbacks. As the coming of wagering to the Latin American country seems around the corner, Brazil continues to revise its rules on advertising.

    Two days ago, the Chamber of Deputies’ Communication Committee greenlit bill 3915/2023, which seeks to restrict the promotion of unlicensed gambling by influencers and digital celebrities. This proposal would mitigate the negative impact of the black market on younger players, lawmakers believe.

    Since unlicensed gambling operators rarely offer a sufficient level of player protection to their players, Brazilian legislators believe that its promotion may lead to significant losses. This, paired with the influence digital celebrities have on younger audiences, may lead to higher problem gambling rates among the Brazilian youth.

    The New Rules Envision Strict Sanctions for Violators

    As a result, the new bill prohibits digital influencers from promoting unregulated gambling products and companies. The same rules apply to overseas entities that target the local market. It covers content on social media, video-sharing platforms, livestreaming services and other digital platforms.

    Under Bill 3915/2023, Brazil will require many of the big digital media platforms, such as Facebook and TikTok to join forces with the local authorities and ensure that inappropriate content is reported and taken down.

    The bill envisions fines for entities that violate its rules. Companies that breach these promotion restrictions risk fines of up to 2% of their revenue to a maximum of $10.2 million (converted to USD). Under the bill, online influencers also risk a permanent ban.

    As mentioned, the bill was already given a go-ahead by the Chamber of Deputies’ Communication Committee. Now, it is up to the Finance and Taxation Commission to decide whether the bill would go to the Constitution and Justice Commission. If approved by the two entities, bill 3915/2023 will be eligible for further evaluation and plenary vote.

    In the meantime, sports betting in Brazil continues to be delayed amid disagreements and calls for ambitious amendments. While the country is in the later stages of discussing betting legislation, its future remains uncertain.

    This means bad news for Entain, which was just forced to shut down its dotcom operations in unregulated markets. While the DPA says that the company may request its exit date to be postponed if there are reasonable grounds to consider that the process of regulation will be completed within a reasonable time of the exit, Brazil’s slower pace when it comes to legislation may be a setback to the company.

    Fiona Simmons

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  • The Specter of Family Separation

    The Specter of Family Separation

    Almost as soon as Donald Trump took office in 2017, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement were dispatched across the country to round up as many undocumented foreigners as possible, and the travel ban put into limbo the livelihoods of thousands of people from majority-Muslim countries who had won the hard-fought right to be here—refugees, tech entrepreneurs, and university professors among them. The administration drew up plans for erecting a border wall, as well as an approach to stripping away the due-process rights of noncitizens so they could be expelled faster. These changes to American immigration policy took place in the amount of time that it would take the average new hire to figure out how to use the office printer.

    Explore the January/February 2024 Issue

    Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

    View More

    Within days of Trump’s election, his key immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, was already gathering a group of loyal bureaucrats to start drafting executive orders. Civil servants who were veterans of the George W. Bush administration found the proposals to be so outlandishly impractical, if not also harmful to American interests and perhaps even illegal, that they assumed the ideas could never come to fruition. They were wrong. Over the next four years, lone children were loaded onto planes and sent back to the countries they had fled without so much as a notification to their families. Others were wrenched from their parents’ arms as a way of sending a message to other families abroad about what awaited them if they, too, tried to enter the United States.

    From the September 2022 issue: The secret history of the U.S.
    government’s family-separation policy

    If given another chance to realize his goals, Miller has essentially boasted in recent interviews that he would move even faster and more forcefully. And Trump, who’s been campaigning on the promise to finish the job he started on immigration policy, would fairly assume if he is reelected that harsh restrictions in that arena are precisely what the American people want. “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” he declared during a speech in Iowa in September, referring to 1954’s offensively titled Operation Wetback, under which hundreds of thousands of people with Mexican ancestry were deported, including some who were American citizens.

    Trump and other key fixtures of his time in office have refused to rule out trying to reinstate family separations. They have been explicit about their plans to send ICE agents back into the streets to make arrests (with help from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the National Guard), and finish their work on the wall. They say that they will reimpose the pandemic-related expulsion policy known as Title 42, which all but shut off access to asylum, and that they will expand the use of military-style camps to house people who are caught in the enforcement dragnet. They have laid out plans and legal rationales for major policy changes that they didn’t get around to the first time, such as ending birthright citizenship, a long-held goal of Trump’s. They’ve floated ideas such as screening would-be immigrants for Marxist views before granting them entry, and using the Alien and Sedition Acts in service of deportations. Trump and his advisers have also made clear that they intend to invoke the Insurrection Act to allow them to deploy the U.S. military to the border, and to use an extensive naval blockade between the United States and Latin America to fight the drug trade. That most drug smuggling occurs at legal ports of entry doesn’t matter to Trump and his team: They seem to have reasonably concluded that immigration restrictions don’t have to be effective to be celebrated by their base.

    The breakneck pace of work during Miller’s White House tour was periodically hampered by worried bureaucrats attempting end runs around him, or by his most powerful detractors, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, whispering reservations into the president’s ear. But Trump’s daughter and son-in-law have left politics altogether, and Miller used Trump’s term to perfect strategies for disempowering anyone else who dared to challenge him. As for job applicants to work in a second Trump administration, Miller told Axios that being in lockstep with him on immigration issues would be “non-negotiable.” Others need not apply.

    Those who choose to join Trump in this mission to slash immigration would do so knowing that they would face few consequences, if any, for how they go about it: Almost all of the administration officials who pushed aggressively for the most controversial policies of Trump’s term continue to enjoy successful careers.

    The speed of Trump’s work on immigration can obscure its impact in real time. This is why Lucas Guttentag, a law professor at Stanford and Yale and a senior counselor on immigration issues in the Obama and Biden administrations, created a database with his students to log and track the more than 1,000 immigration-policy changes made during Trump’s years in office. Most remain in place. This is worth dwelling on. Trump’s time in office already represents a resurgence of old, disproven ideas about the inherent threat—physical, cultural, and economic—posed by immigrants. And if Trump does return to office, this moment may qualify less as a blip than an era: a period like previous ones when such misconceptions prevailed, and laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act and eugenics-based national-origins quotas ruled the day.

    Caitlin Dickerson: America never wanted the tired, poor, huddled masses

    Returning Trump to the presidency would reopen wounds that have barely healed in the communities he has said he would target immediately. Recently, I stood outside a church in the Northeast that caters mostly to undocumented farmworkers, with a Catholic sister who oversees the parish’s programming. As we stood in the autumn light, I remarked on the picturesque scene around her place of worship and work. She replied by pointing in one direction, then another, then another, at the places where she said ICE agents used to hide out on Sunday mornings during the Trump administration, waiting to capture her congregants as they left Mass to go about their weekly errands at the laundromat and the grocery store.

    Beyond the emotional impact of Trump’s return, the economy could also face a pummeling if the number of immigrant workers, legal and otherwise, were to drop. In a November 2022 speech, Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, detailed the harm from COVID-related dips in immigration, which left the country short an estimated 1 million workers.

    America’s rightward shift on immigration is part of a global story in which Western countries are, in general, turning against immigrants. But the world tends to look to the United States as a guide for what sorts of checks on immigration are socially permissible. A new Trump administration would provide a pretty clear answer: just about any.

    An anything-goes approach to immigration enforcement may indeed be what the country is left with if Trump succeeds in the next general election. “The first 100 days of the Trump administration will be pure bliss,” Stephen Miller told Axios, “followed by another four years of the most hard-hitting action conceivable.”

    This article appears in the January/February 2024 print edition with the headline “The Specter of Family Separation.”

    Caitlin Dickerson

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  • Panama celebrates court order to cancel mine even as business is hit

    Panama celebrates court order to cancel mine even as business is hit

    For more than a month, protests against Central America’s largest open-pit copper mine have held Panama in a state of siege. Roadblocks have caused gas and propane shortages. Many supermarket shelves have run bare. Restaurants and hotels have sat empty.

    But on Tuesday, protesters in Panama got the news they were waiting for.

    The country’s Supreme Court of Justice ruled that Panama’s new mining contract with the Canadian company First Quantum was unconstitutional.

    Protesters danced in the streets in front of the Supreme Court. They waved the red, white and blue Panamanian flag and sang the national anthem.

    The ruling, a big blow for investors and the country’s long-term credit rating, is, for the moment, a source of relief for Panama, which has been shaken by the country’s largest protest movement to plague the country in decades.

    The news of the Supreme Court ruling came early on Tuesday – the day of the anniversary of Panama’s Independence from Spain.

    “Today, we are celebrating two independences,” 58-year-old restaurant worker Nestor Gonzalez told Al Jazeera. “Independence from Spain and independence from the mine. And no one is going to forget it.”

    People turned out to celebrate. The bistro where Gonzalez works, in the western province of Chiriqui, was packed with patrons by noon – something the restaurant had not seen since mid-October.

    “We are so happy,” said Gonzalez, “because, we had been locked up in the province of Chiriqui for 35 days, without gas, without propane and with little food. I had to go look for firewood in the mountains because I had no propane to cook with. So thank God that the justices took a stand and issued this ruling.”

    The mine, known as Cobre Panama, has been in production since 2019, and extracting 300,000 tonnes of copper a year. It represents roughly five percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and 75 percent of Panamanian exports. The mining sector contributes roughly seven percent of Panama’s GDP with Cobre Panama as the country’s most important mine.

    But protesters said Cobre Panama was a disaster for the country’s environment and a handout to a foreign corporation.

    “I’m protesting because they are stealing our country. They are just handing it over,” said Ramon Rodriguez, a protester in a yellow raincoat in a march in late October, after protests ignited against the mine. “The sovereignty of our country is in danger. That’s why I’m here.”

    This question of sovereignty is particularly important for Panamanians, who fought throughout the 20th century to rid the country of the United States-controlled Panama Canal Zone. This was an area almost half the size of the US state of Rhode Island that sliced through the middle of Panama.

    “This contract is bad. It never should have been made. Never. So you have to fight,” said Miriam Caballero, a middle-aged woman in a grey sweatshirt who watched the October protest pass.

    Protesters said Cobre Panama was a disaster for the country’s environment and a handout to the Canadian firm that had the mining contract [Michael Fox/Al Jazeera]

    Impact on foreign investment

    This was not the first contract with the mine. In 2021, the Supreme Court declared the previous contract unconstitutional for not adequately benefitting the public good. The government of President Laurentino Cortizo renegotiated the contract with improved benefits for the state. This was fast-tracked through Congress on October 20. Cortizo signed it into law hours later.

    The president and his cabinet had applauded the new contract, saying it would bring windfall profits for the state.

    “The contract ensures a minimum payment to the state of $375m dollars a year, for the next 20 years,” Commerce Minister Federico Alfaro told Panama news outlet Telemetro. “If you can compare this with what the state was receiving before, which was $35m a year, it’s a substantial improvement to the past.”

    Cortizo promised to use the funds to shore up the country’s Social Security Fund and increase pensions for more than 120,000 retirees.

    After the protests spiralled out of control, he announced a moratorium on all new mining projects and promised to hold a referendum over the fate of Cobre Panama. The idea didn’t gain traction. The protesters wouldn’t budge.

    Members of Panama’s business sector have blamed Cortizo for mishandling the crisis and refusing to use a heavy hand to end the roadblocks and stop the protests. Last week, they said it had cost the country $1.7bn.

    Cortizo, whose approval rating was already down to 24 percent in June, responded to this week’s court ruling, stating, “All Panamanians need to respect and abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court.”

    Analysts say the protests and the ruling will have an impact for foreign companies looking to do business in Panama.

    “I believe this court ruling is sending a very clear message to foreign investors,” Jorge Cuellar, ​​assistant professor of Latin American studies at Dartmouth College, told Al Jazeera. “If this is the kind of foreign investment that politicians and capitalists are innovating in 2023, then Panamanians want no part of it.”

    But this stance will likely come at a price.

    In early November, after more than a week of protests, rating agency Moody’s downgraded Panama’s debt to the lowest investment-grade rating. It cited financial issues and noted the political turmoil. JP Morgan analysts said, at the time, that if the mining contract were revoked, it would substantially increase Panama’s risk of losing its investment-grade rating.

    First Quantum also has much to lose. Its shares have lost 60 percent of their value over the last month and a half. More than 40 percent of the company’s production comes from the Panamanian mine.

    Over the weekend, the company notified Panama that it planned to take the country to arbitration under the Free Trade Agreement between the two countries.

    But in a statement released after the ruling, First Quantum said, “The Company wishes to express that it respects Panamanian laws and will review the content of the judgement to understand its foundations.”

    Indigenous Peoples March in Panama to protest the mine contract
    Protesters said the country’s sovereignty was at stake [Michael Fox/Al Jazeera]

    ‘Jobs at risk’

    The announcement is also a blow for the employees of the mine. The mine employs roughly 6,600 people – 86 percent of whom are Panamanian – and a total 40,000 direct and indirect jobs.

    The Union of Panamanian Mine Workers, Utramipa, announced its members would march in several cities on Wednesday against the Supreme Court decision and in defence of their jobs.

    “We are not going to allow them to put our jobs at risk, which are our means for supporting our families,” the union said in a statement.

    Last week, Utramipa member Michael Camacho denounced the protests on the news outlet Panama En Directo. Operations at the mine were suspended last week due to protests at its port and the highway in and out of the facility.

    “What about us, the workers? We are also Panamanians. We have the right to go to our homes and return to our place of work,” said Camacho. “But at this moment, we are being held hostage by the protesters, by the anti-social, the terrorists – which is what we should call them – and the people that stop us from passing.”

    For the majority of Panamanians, the Supreme Court ruling is a welcomed sign that the country is on the road to normalcy.

    Protesters in some provinces have promised to stay in the streets until the Supreme Court ruling is officially published – which usually takes a few days – or until the mine is closed for good. But many roadblocks have now been cleared, highways that stood empty for weeks are now open, and gas stations are rolling back in business.

    “We are in a new phase,” Harry Brown Arauz, the director of Panama’s International Center of Social and Political Studies, told Al Jazeera. “The protests, as we have seen until now, should be lifted. And the government has said that it will begin the process of closing the mine in an orderly manner. This can generate confidence in the population, which had been lost.”

    Arauz says the protest movement and the ruling are a powerful sign of the strength of Panama’s democracy, which the country regained just over 30 years ago.

    “This is a really important moment,” he says. “It marks a before and after for Panamanian democracy.”

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  • Lionel Messi Fast Facts | CNN

    Lionel Messi Fast Facts | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look at the life of soccer player Lionel “Leo” Messi, who plays for Argentina’s national team and Major League Soccer (MLS) club Inter Miami.

    Birth date: June 24, 1987

    Birth place: Rosario, Argentina

    Birth name: Lionel Andrés Messi

    Father: Jorge Messi, factory worker

    Mother: Celia Cuccittini de Messi

    Marriage: Antonela Roccuzzo (June 30, 2017-present)

    Children: Ciro, Mateo and Thiago

    As a young boy, Messi was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency. At age 13, he signed with Futbol Club Barcelona and moved to Spain. As part of the contract, FC Barcelona agreed to pay for Messi’s hormone treatments.

    All-time leading scorer of FC Barcelona and Spanish soccer league La Liga.

    Winner of the Ballon d’Or, or footballer of the year, a record eight times: a record four consecutive years (2009-2012) and again for 2015, 2019, 2021 and 2023.

    Won the European Golden Shoe award six times: 2009-10, 2011-12, 2012-13, 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19.

    1995-2000 – Plays for the local club team, Newell’s Old Boys, in Rosario, Argentina.

    2000-2003 – Signs with FC Barcelona and works his way up through Barca’s youth squads.

    November 16, 2003 – Makes his team debut, as a replacement in a friendly match against FC Porto.

    October 16, 2004 – Makes his official debut for FC Barcelona against Espanyol. Barca wins 1-0.

    2007 – Establishes the Leo Messi Foundation, working to improve access to education and health care for children.

    August 2008 – Leads Argentina’s soccer team to a gold medal at the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

    March 11, 2010 – Messi is announced as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

    2011-2012 season – Sets the all-time record for most goals scored in a single season for a major European football league, with 73 goals.

    June 2013 – Prosecutors in Barcelona file tax fraud charges against Messi and his father for the period between 2007 and 2009. The complaint alleges that Messi and his father, aiming to lower their Spanish tax bill, sought to manage the player’s lucrative income from image rights through shell companies set up overseas. Messi denies all allegations of wrongdoing.

    June 25, 2013 – Prosecutors in Barcelona tell CNN that Messi paid €10 million ($13 million) in taxes to cover the tax period 2010-2011, but efforts to prosecute him for alleged tax fraud from 2007 to 2009 are still ongoing.

    August 14, 2013 – Messi and his father, Jorge Messi, make a “reparatory” payment of €5 million ($6.6 million) to Spanish authorities for allegedly committing tax fraud between 2007 and 2009.

    September 27, 2013 – Messi and his father testify in a Barcelona court in a preliminary hearing over allegations they defrauded Spanish tax authorities of more than $5 million.

    March 16, 2014 – Scores a hat-trick (three goals during a game), to become FC Barcelona’s all-time leading scorer with 371 goals, eclipsing the record set by Paulino Alcantara, who scored 369 goals.

    May 2014 – Signs a new contract with FC Barcelona for a reported annual net of €20 million ($27 million).

    June 2014 – A Spanish state prosecutor asks the judge to drop the tax fraud charges against Messi, but not his father.

    July 13, 2014 – Messi wins the Golden Ball award for the best player of the World Cup tournament.

    July 28, 2014 – A judge rules that the tax fraud case against Messi and his father will proceed, despite the Spanish state prosecutor’s June request that the charges against Messi be dropped.

    November 22, 2014 – Messi scores a hat-trick to become the Spanish league’s all-time leading goalscorer with 253 goals, surpassing Telmo Zarra’s previous record of 251 goals.

    October 8, 2015 – A Spanish court rules that Messi and his father will stand trial for tax fraud charges.

    May 31, 2016 – The tax fraud trial begins for Messi and his father.

    June 27, 2016 – Says he probably will retire from international soccer after Argentina loses the Copa America final to Chile on penalties.

    July 6, 2016 – A Barcelona court fines Messi €2 million ($2.3 million), and sentences him to 21 months in prison for tax fraud. The Spanish courts reduces Messi’s prison sentence to an additional fine of €252,000 ($287,000) in July 2017.

    August 12, 2016 – Messi announces that he will play for Argentina once again, having stated in June that he would retire from international soccer.

    July 5, 2017 – Barcelona and Messi announce a contract extension that will keep Messi at Barca until June 30, 2021, and is reportedly worth €565,000 ($645,000) a week.

    January 13, 2019 – Scores his 400th Spanish league goal in his 435th appearance, extending his record as La Liga’s all-time top scorer. Messi is the first player to score 400 times in any of Europe’s “big five” leagues.

    August 2, 2019 – Messi is banned from all competition for three months and fined $50,000 by the CONMEBOL Disciplinary Court. The punishment comes after Messi accused South American football’s governing body of corruption, suggesting the 2019 Copa America was rigged in favor of hosts Brazil.

    August 5, 2021 – Messi is leaving FC Barcelona, according to a statement from the club.

    August 10, 2021 – French club Paris Saint-Germain announces signing Messi to a two-year contract with an option of extending for a third year.

    January 2, 2022 – In a statement, Paris Saint-Germain announces Messi is one of four players of the French club to have tested positive for Covid-19. The other three players are Juan Bernat, Sergio Rico and Nathan Bitumazala.

    May 30, 2022 – Speaks about his struggle to recover from Covid-19 after testing positive in January. He missed three matches: two in Ligue 1 and one in the French Cup. “It left me with after effects. It left me with after effects in my lungs. I came back and it was like a month and a half without even being able to run because my lungs were affected.”

    December 18, 2022 – Argentina defeats France to win the World Cup. Messi, playing in his fifth and final World Cup, scores twice. Later, Messi wins his second Golden Ball award.

    June 7, 2023 – Messi says he’s going to join the MLS club Inter Miami. “I made the decision that I am going to Miami. I still haven’t closed it one hundred percent. I’m missing some things but we decided to continue my journey there,” he says in an interview posted by Spanish outlets SPORT and Mundo Deportivo. On July 21, he makes his debut with the club.

    August 19, 2023 – Messi scores to lead Inter Miami past Nashville FC in a penalty kick shootout to capture the Leagues Cup title and score the club’s first trophy.

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  • Brazil Sets Stringent Requirements for Sportsbook Operators

    Brazil Sets Stringent Requirements for Sportsbook Operators

    Brazil’s Ministry of Finance has released a comprehensive set of requirements for sportsbook operators intending to enter the regulated market after its establishment. All interested operators must express their intent within 30 days to expedite the process. The new regulatory framework is now under Senate review after approval in the lower house earlier this year.

    Players Will Receive Vastly Improved Protections

    The Ministry of Finance’s Ordinance No. 1,330 outlines general rules for sportsbook operators, focusing on several crucial aspects, including responsible gambling, payment procedures, and marketing standards. Companies wishing to operate legally in the country must obtain a grant set at BRL30 million ($6 million), valid for three years.

    One notable requirement is the prohibition of granting concessions to companies with shareholders, directors, and corporate members who are athletes, sporting officials, or directors of national sports teams. This move aims to mitigate conflicts of interest, particularly after the soccer match-fixing scandal that recently impacted Brazilian sports.

    To promote responsible gambling, operators must restrict access to their platforms for individuals under 18. They must also implement safer gambling tools, including daily time limits, loss limits, self-exclusion options, and time-out periods. These measures aim to protect Brazilian consumers, curb addiction rates, and promote safer gambling practices.

    The Bill’s Financial Aspect Remains Hotly Contested

    The document also introduces strict advertising regulations, especially near schools and universities. Promotional material in such educational settings cannot suggest that gambling leads to personal success or improved financial conditions. Operators are not allowed to let players use third-party payment methods, and all industry advertising must be based on social responsibility and awareness, carrying the message “Play Responsibly.”

    Despite the substantial improvements to player safety, the new legislation faces significant criticism regarding its taxation updates. The Brazilian Institute of Responsible Gaming spoke out against the planned tax increase of 18%, arguing it could hinder Brazil’s nascent sports betting industry, hampering its growth and competitiveness with gray market operators. Such a tax burden could significantly hurt the regulated sector, causing reduced investments in essential fields.

    Since the document is a government ordinance, the rules have immediate effect, leaving little room for further discussion. Overall, Ordinance No. 1,330 represents a significant leap forward in Brazil’s efforts to impose order on its gambling industry. However, the country must demonstrate its ability and willingness to enforce its new rules, ensuring violators and illegal operators receive swift punishments.

    Deyan Dimitrov

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  • Sinego Takes Us Through Latin America With Alterego

    Sinego Takes Us Through Latin America With Alterego

    Sinego’s attention to detail in his music is what sets him apart in the industry: he can take a recording from any everyday interaction and use it to perfect a track, he develops missions in music- providing necessary exposure and education to Latin American cultures whether you notice or not, and he has a way of tying it all together into a well-produced record. Sinego is a once-in-a-lifetime artist, deserving of his accolades and his fan’s support, and he’s here with his debut album, a labor of love called Alterego.

    Alterego has a mission, split into two parts: El Dia and El Noche, the albums follow Sinego through multiple Latin American countries…showcasing their classic sounds, honing in on instruments and vocals that complement the cultures. It’s an impressive feat by Sinego, who created a documentary alongside his travels as he worked tirelessly to encapsulate the essence of countries like Cuba, Colombia, Puerto Rico, and more. You can listen to lead single, “Labios (La Noche)” here:

    As a multi-instrumentalist and DJ, Sinego solidifies himself as one of the most exciting artists in the dance community who has a clear idea of who he is as an artist. Alterego enlists Sinego as an advocate for bringing Latin American music into the mainstream, which has already been growing in popularity thanks to the likes of Bad Bunny, Karol G, and J Balvin.

    However, Sinego takes it a step further: immersing himself, and listeners, in rich culture that ignores stereotypes and dispels them. It gives the perfect picture of both Latin American culture and Sinego’s sound as an artist. One of the most well-rounded dance albums I’ve heard, Alterego is worth your time.

    We got a chance to sit down with Sinego and talk about representing Latin America, Alterego, and more! Check it out below!

    PD: Your new album, Alterego, highlights different Latin American countries and their local artists. How does it educate listeners about Latin American culture?

    It helps us show the world there are many flavors and contrasts in the region. There´s not just one sound that’s part of this stereotypical idea that Latin America is “spicy”, “tropical”, and ¨hot”. There are hundreds of genres that touch other parts of art not related to these concepts. For example Tango, Boleros, Milongas. Def colder genres.

    PD: You’re also releasing a documentary from the album about your travels while creating it. What was your favorite memory from these trips?

    I made a stop in Cuba to create the collab with my friends, Pauza. We ended up creating a rave in a place called Yarini in La Havana. It was quite the experience, playing for an audience that´s non-pretentious and very tuned in with dance. At the end of the night, I lost my camera with tons of footage from the country, but one of the girls from Pauza told me: “When you lose something, all bad things go with it.”

    PD: What message do you hope listeners will take away from your album?

    As my big inspiration, Anthony Bourdain said, “Your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”
    I want electronic music fans to enjoy the ride at the dancefloor. Make it a little bit less pretentious and more about discovering the culture of a region like Latin America.

    PD: You use a lot of recordings from your travels in your music. Can you give us some examples?

    In the song from Colombia, I went to different markets to get textures for the high-end of the tracks. I wanted to give them depth so I basically added an extra layer of sound recordings from the country as if it were vinyl noise (the kind lo-fi producers use in their tracks).
    Also in the Puerto Rico song I ended up working with Millo Torres for the vocals, one of the musicians for Cheo Feliciano, the inspiration behind ¨El Raton¨.
    Lastly, in most of the album, I use guitars. Each time I travel to a new country I look for the best acoustic guitarist to record them. It was an excellent experience to get to know so many talented people from Argentina to Puerto Rico.

    PD: The album is in two parts…do they both tell the same story? Or would you say they have separate themes?

    Alterego has El Dia (day) and La Noche (night). They are two sides of the same coin but serve a different purpose. El Dia wants to explore the colors and the listening experience for the listener. La Noche shows the contrast from the regions and wants to generate a dancefloor catharsis for the audience. It´s a perfect analogy of Latin-America, a place full of colors, brightness, and culture, but also a place full of dark stories, nostalgia, and nights.

    PD: How did you encapsulate Ecuadorian culture in your single “Labios (La Noche)?”

    Labios is a song full of nostalgia. It mixes the Nostalgia from Ecuadorian Boleros with the dancefloor energy from House raves. Its “traditional trio” choirs and guitars bring a legacy sound to the dancefloor with a sound that reminds of artists like DJ Seinfeld & Fred Again. Its lo-fi drums mixed with a rolling bass make it a perfect tool for an underground rave.

    Labios reminds me of Quito. A place to remember the good times of the past.

    Jai Phillips

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  • Can Milei still win in Argentina?

    Can Milei still win in Argentina?

    Javier Milei, the firebrand libertarian candidate for Argentina’s presidency, surprised the world with a first-place finish in the primaries this August. But in the presidential election this past weekend, he finished second behind Peronist candidate Sergio Massa, Argentina’s current economy minister. Neither candidate passed the threshold needed to become the next president, so they will have a head-to-head rematch on November 19.

    Does Milei still have a chance? Why did Argentina’s markets falter after Milei came out ahead this summer? And why are Massa’s allies in the government handing out money to voters?

    Join Reason‘s Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe this Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern on Reason‘s YouTube channel or Facebook page to discuss these questions and more with Marcos Falcone, a political scientist, project manager at Argentina’s Fundación Libertad, and podcast host.

     

    Sources referenced in this conversation:

    Argentina’s 2023 presidential election results

    “Argentina’s (Unexpected) Libertarian Moment,” by Marcos Falcone

    “Argentina’s presidential election delivers a surprise result,” The Economist

    Support for Milei by party affiliation, Economist Intelligence Unit

    “A man, a plan, a chainsaw,” by Daniel Politi and David Biller

    “Is Javier Milei’s Movement in Argentina a Cult of Personality in the Name of Libertarianism?” by Antonella Marty and Jose Benegas

    “What’s in Javier Milei’s head?” by Federico Rivas Molina

    Zach Weissmueller

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  • Venezuela’s opposition primary: Will Maduro finally be challenged?

    Venezuela’s opposition primary: Will Maduro finally be challenged?

    On Sunday, Venezuela’s opposition parties held their first primary in 11 years to select a candidate to face current Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in the 2024 presidential election.

    Here is all we know about the Venezuelan opposition primary, and why it matters.

    What happened at the primary?

    Opposition politicians held the primary without state assistance after the National Electoral Council took months to respond to a request for logistical help. Venezuelans voted using paper ballots instead of electronic machines in voting centres at homes, churches, private schools and other facilities.

    A poll earlier this month by the Venezuela-based research firm Delphos indicated more than half of people identified as likely to participate did not know where to vote.

    What’s at stake?

    Last week, Venezuela’s government and a faction of the opposition formally agreed to work together to reach a series of basic conditions for the next presidential election. The government and the opposition said in a joint agreement that each side can choose its candidate according to its own internal rules.

    The primary could be a chance for the opposition to rally support from voters in Venezuela, whose economy has been in deep crisis for years.

    What is a banned candidate?

    Officials who are found guilty of corruption are banned from holding public office for up to 15 years.

    Venezuela’s opposition says the government uses bans unlawfully to prevent them from competing in elections.

    Two of the 13 originally registered candidates for the primary have dropped out because they were barred from holding public office.

    Who is Maria Corina Machado?

    Maria Corina Machado is an opposition member of the Venezuelan National Assembly, a free-market advocate, and an adversary of Venezuela’s leftist government.

    Despite being barred from holding public office, Machado, 56, has chosen to stay in the race.

    The industrial engineer and former lawmaker has been barred for 15 years since June. This is due to her support for United States sanctions on the Maduro government and her backing of former opposition leader Juan Guaido.

    Has anyone won the primary?

    While the final results are still pending, Machado is leading the polls, tallying 93 percent of the vote, with over 26 percent of ballot boxes counted.

    The count – delayed due to a server blockage – was expected to continue on Monday. It was unclear when the next results update would be given.

    Machado’s nearest rival, former lawmaker and democratic action candidate Carlos Prosperi, had 4.75 percent of the vote. Machado has claimed victory, saying that she has a mandate to take on Maduro.

    How is the relationship between Venezuela and the US shaping this vote?

    The US eased sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector in response to the deal reached between the government and opposition parties for the 2024 election. These sanctions were especially tightened back in 2019 under former US President Donald Trump.

    The US has insisted that Maduro’s government lift the ban on opposition candidates contesting in the 2024 election. So far, Maduro has refused to budge.

    What happens if Machado wins the election?

    It is unclear what would happen if a barred candidate wins the primary.

    However, Machado has said that if she wins the primary, she will be able to pressure the electoral council to let her register for the general election.

    Meanwhile, Reuters quoted an anonymous, senior US Department of State official threatening to reverse sanctions relief measures unless Maduro lifts bans on the electoral participation of opposition candidates.

    Alternatively, if Machado is unable to register for the general election, another candidate from the opposition could fight in her place. Several candidates have said there is no unified decision about what to do and it is unclear whether the opposition will put forward a candidate of Machado’s choosing.

    Will Maduro finally be challenged?

    The opposition has an opportunity to put Maduro off balance “with the help of the United States and international community,” according to US think-tank the Atlantic Council. The opposition has the chance to mobilise voters who are tired of the stasis of current politics.

    “What Maduro fears most, more than any one political opponent, is a disciplined opposition that is popular, organized, and ready to mobilize its base in 2024,” added the Atlantic Council report.

    However, if Machado does not register for the general election, the odds could tilt in Maduro’s favour. “A fractured opposition with lowered turnout could allow Maduro to win a plurality,” said a report by the United States Institute of Peace.

    When is the presidential election?

    The presidential election will be held in the latter half of 2024, with the exact date unspecified so far.

    Venezuela’s elections usually take place in December, though in 2018 voting was brought forward to May.

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  • Fintech startup Finerio secures $6.5M to create open finance ecosystem in Latin America | TechCrunch

    Fintech startup Finerio secures $6.5M to create open finance ecosystem in Latin America | TechCrunch

    Finerio Connect, a Mexico City-based fintech startup, raised $6.5 million in new funding to continue development on its open finance platform providing access to personalized financial products and services.

    Nick Grassi and José Luis López, both co-CEOs, started the company in 2018 with the vision of enabling the compliant sharing and consumption of financial data and data analytics across Latin America.

    Prior to that, Grassi, an American, moved to Mexico on a Fulbright Scholarship. As part of that, he began working at Deloitte Consulting Mexico, where he met Lopez.

    “This was around 2016, and we were tasked with starting the early fintech practice, and the industry itself was just getting started,” Grassi told TechCrunch. “We were helping a lot of different companies — banks, payment processors and insurance companies — figure out what the fintech wave might mean for them.”

    Grassi and Lopez got to thinking about platforms, like Mint, where you could control your personal finances. The pair eventually created their own automated personal finance manager with Finerio Connect and launched it at TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield Latin America in 2018.

    Knowing when to pivot

    Shortly after the launch, Finerio was the fourth most downloaded fintech app that year, according to Grassi. In Mexico, the company gained about 250,000 users after one year.

    Around that time, Mexico’s fintech law came out. It was one of the first countries in Latin America to regulate the industry. It’s widely known that Mexicans distrust banks, which is why an estimated 70% of the population of adults in Latin America are currently unbanked or underserved. One of the key provisions in the new law was related to transparency.

    Grassi said the law hasn’t advanced much in the past five years. However, he and Lopez saw early signs of a move toward regulation around open banking, which both Brazil and Colombia were also doing. At the same time, the company was getting inbound requests by insurers, foreign banks and other fintechs asking Finerio to open up its technology.

    “It became apparent to us that there was a need, so in 2020, we decided to pivot the company to business-to-business to be able to connect bank accounts, process data and analyze it to create a personal finance experience in a white label,” Grassi said.

    That’s been the company’s focus ever since. It not only provides financial data aggregation and categorization, but also collaborates with regulators and financial institutions to implement and monetize that aggregation and the delivery of it in compliance with regulations.

    Open banking initiatives

    Today, Finerio works with over 120 financial institutions and fintechs. Last year, the company launched an API hub with Visa and OzoneAPI and began piloting it in several countries. The hub offers products and services, including digital payments, credit and personal finance management. It also provides a place for financial institutions to comply with new open banking regulations.

    In the past 18 months, usage of the API grew 700%, Grassi said. Finerio is also poised to reach another 40 financial institutions in the next year. The company charges customers a minimum usage fee and then a variable fee on top which is dependent on how much data the customer is consuming. In the past year, Finerio had over $1 million in annual recurring revenue.

    The new $6.5 million in equity financing was led by Third Prime with participation from strategic investors Visa, Bancolombia Ventures and Krealo, Credicorp’s venture capital arm. Alaya Capital, Gaingels, Plug and Play and Winklevoss Capital also joined in with a group of angel investors associated with Guiabolso, Dock and ClassPass. Previously, the company had raised around $3.2 million SAFE notes.

    “We believe that government support of open banking initiatives across LatAm, together with the enormous population of underserved consumers, creates a tremendous opportunity to create value for investors and to meaningfully increase the financial well-being of historically disadvantaged consumers,” Mike Kim, general partner at Third Prime, said in a written statement.

    Meanwhile, Grassi has already deployed some of the funds into making some key hires, including chief technology officer José Santacruz López, who held that previous role at Kushki. The company will also be expanding its API hub in two additional countries and grow usage overall.

    “We’re talking about getting multiple banks onto the same standard by creating what we are calling ‘the HTML of open banking,’” Grassi said. “It’s quite a complex product, but we’re getting a lot of interest and running a couple of pilots. Our goal is to take time to convert those from pilots into customers.”

    Christine Hall

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